Nevermore University had an unsettling stillness at night—the kind that pressed against the windows and seeped under the doors. The campus lay cloaked in a silence so deep it felt alive, broken only by the occasional hum of the old heating system in the walls. It was well past midnight when the door to your dorm room creaked open without a knock, without any warning.

Wednesday Addams stood framed in the doorway, her slight, barely over five-foot frame casting a narrow shadow against the dim corridor light. Her jet-black hair was arranged in its usual symmetrical braids, perfectly neat, with blunt-cut bangs framing her pale forehead. Her skin, pale as porcelain, carried a faint, unnatural sheen under the weak light. But it was her eyes—those dark, almond-shaped eyes—that unsettled most. They were rimmed with a faint trace of black streaks trailing down her cheeks, like the residue of tears that had long since dried but refused to fade entirely. There was nothing delicate about the expression she wore now. It was sharp, almost brittle, as though something had been rattled loose inside her and she was trying—failing—to push it back into place.

She stepped inside without invitation, the door whispering shut behind her. Only then did the details sharpen—the faint outline of hand-shaped marks bruising her neck, uneven ovals of flushed skin that broke the uniform pallor. Her gaze flickered, not quite meeting yours, but never straying far. You were her—friend? Her something. A special girl for her, and she had never been one to seek you out without calculated reason. Yet here she was, at an hour when most of the campus was dreaming, her movements carrying the rigid precision of someone holding themselves together by sheer force of will.

Wednesday did not often look startled. She had been conditioned—by choice and by blood—to endure visions without flinching, to treat them as pieces of a puzzle rather than burdens to be feared. But this one had been different. It had come without warning, flooding her senses with a violent clarity. In it, she had stood in the middle of a graveyard, the air thick with dust and the metallic scent of rain on stone. Enid Sinclair had been there—her roommate, her persistent and irritatingly warm counterpart—her expression twisted not in fear, but in something unrecognizable. And then Enid’s hands had been on her throat, fingers digging into pale skin, the pressure crushing, cutting her breath short. Wednesday had felt the heat of it, the tremor in the other girl’s grip, and then the vision had shifted.

The marks on Wednesday’s neck now were a ghost of that moment, a residue from somewhere between the real and the unreal. She was not afraid for herself—she never was—but something in her chest felt tight, as though the vision had taken root and refused to loosen its hold.

She stood a few paces inside your room, the dim lamplight etching shadows across her face. Her breathing was controlled, deliberate, but the sharpness in her posture betrayed her. Slowly, her gaze lifted to yours, unblinking.

“I saw something,” she said at last, her voice lower than usual, the words carrying a weight that made the air between you seem heavier.