My stomach growled again — loudly — and I nearly laughed at myself.

  All right, Malinka. Think like a detective. If you were a hungry student, where would you go?

  Hungry dark lurer, I corrected myself mentally. Yes, apparently I was no longer just an exchange student from another dimension but also an accidental undead seductress. Career progression was going beautifully.

  Perhaps I could just charm another skeleton into fetching dinner. Although… given my track record, he’d probably return with something that had expired three funerals ago. Or worse — attempt romantic conversation and invite me to a moonlit supper with his bony companions.

  Maybe a ghost, then. I could politely ask for directions. Though, realistically, the ghost would launch into a tragic monologue about his suffering and untimely death, far too dignified to answer something as mundane as, “Where’s the dining hall?”

  I walked on at random, mentally mapping turns — and somehow still managed to get lost.

  The corridors began to change.

  The stone grew older. Cracked. The walls were slick with dark, damp mould, and the air smelled of rot and cold stone. That kind of smell that had settled in permanently.

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  I’d thought I was beginning to understand the twisted layout of the Academy corridors. Apparently not. Instead of finding anything remotely resembling a dining hall, I wandered into somewhere else entirely.

  Somewhere wrong.

  I noticed the statues.

  Monsters lined the corridor on both sides — grotesque creatures with twisted wings, bared stone fangs, warped faces locked in expressions of rage or agony. They seemed positioned too deliberately, too evenly spaced, as though they had been placed there to watch.

  And watch they did.

  Every time I turned my head, I had the distinct, creeping sensation that the statues had shifted slightly. That their blind stone eyes had followed me.

  The Academy had already shown me worse things. Skeletons, ghosts, students who smiled too much.

  This was different.

  The air here was thick. Heavy. As if breathing required negotiation.

  There was no sound — and yet there was. A faint, almost inaudible murmur beneath the silence. Like stone rubbing against stone. Like something whispering just beyond hearing.

  Each monstrous face seemed fixed directly on me.

  The statues weren’t decorative.

  They were observing.

  Cold sweat prickled along my spine. My heartbeat slowed, then began to pound harder.

  This wasn’t the usual “haunted academy aesthetic.”— the kind you could roll your eyes at once a skeleton passed by. This was something deeper. Something that pressed against the lungs.

  The corridor behind me seemed narrower now. Darker. The lamps weaker.

  And then—

  I heard it.

  A whisper. Soft. Close. Intimate.

  “Marina…”

  The sound wrapped around my name like cold fingers, it came from nowhere — and everywhere at once. My stomach twisted violently at the sound.

  I took one slow step back, staring into the thickening shadow of the corridor — and for the first time since arriving in Tarnograd, I genuinely wished I’d stayed under the bed with the unknown growling animal instead.