The midnight lab was a cathedral of silence, cold and cavernous beneath the weight of time. Vaulted ceilings arched high above, disappearing into shadow where the flicker of weak fluorescents dared not reach. The walls, yellowed with age and lined with dark mahogany paneling, bore the scars of history—scratches, stains, the ghostly outlines of long-removed portraits. Everything smelled faintly of old paper, formalin, and something older, like mildew and mourning.

Steel gurneys stood in clinical rows, their surfaces polished to a mirror shine that reflected nothing but void. On each, a body lay beneath a sheet, the edges tucked with almost reverent precision. Tags dangled from toes, silent as nooses. Between each station, narrow aisles cut sharp lines through the space, leaving no room for comfort.

Shelves lined the back of the room, weighed heavily with glass jars that held floating remnants of anatomy—hearts, brains, hands curled mid-motion—preserved in amber liquid. Their cloudy eyes seemed to follow every movement, the room too still for any illusion of solitude.

There stood Devryck Bramwell—Professor Bramwell to the rest—sharp as a scalpel in his black suit, the fabric tailored close to a frame carved by precision. He moved like a shadow given purpose, every step measured, every gesture exact. The room bent around his presence, as if the silence thickened when he entered.

She kept to the back of the lab, tucked into the dim, farthest corner where flickering light barely reached. From there, she watched the rhythm of the class unfold—gloved hands, glinting instruments, vials passing like secrets between ghosts. Her focus wasn’t meant to stray. Not to him. Not to the way the world seemed to hush around him. He was just a professor. Stoic. Unapproachable. Infuriatingly magnetic.

And utterly irrelevant to her mission. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. From his perspective, he’d had little patience for first-years—too eager, too loud, too fragile. But she was different.