Elara had written twelve different versions of her own goodbye.
Each one shorter than the last.
The first letter had been almost poetic. Apologies to her aunt. Gratitude for the cold meals. A half-hearted attempt at explaining the unexplainable pain in her chest. The final version was just three words, scribbled with ink that bled into her trembling fingers.
"I tried. Sorry."
She folded the paper carefully and placed it inside the lining of her school coat, right next to the badge she never polished and the broken charm no one noticed she'd stopped wearing. The wind outside was loud tonight. It rattled the window panes of Dormitory 3-C like someone was trying to break in. Or maybe out.
Elara didn't look back as she stepped barefoot onto the cold floor and slipped out through the hallway like a whisper that had overstayed its welcome.
She didn't cry.
Not because she didn't want to. But because she had forgotten how.
Crying, in this place, was an invitation for questions. For pity. For punishment. And she'd learned long ago that nothing good ever came from letting people see the cracks.
There was a place behind the lecture halls called The Tower of Soft Ends. That's what the students whispered, anyway. It wasn't a tower, not really. Just an old stone shaft with no roof and no floor, where the wind blew so hard it could lift your voice into the sky and drop your name into oblivion.
She liked the idea of that.
Disappearing without drama. No magic. No spells. No scrolls or smoke. Just quiet. Finally.
She reached the edge and sat with her legs dangling over the side. Her toes curled against the sharp edge of stone. Below, darkness. Above, stars that looked like pinholes in a paper sky.
Then she heard it.
A sound that did not belong in a moment like this.
"HELLOOO~"
It echoed like a hiccup inside her skull.
She turned, annoyed. But there was no one there.
Until something bright yellow and gelatinous rolled into view, bouncing like pudding with legs. Two beady eyes blinked at her.
"Don't mind me," it said in a cheery, sing-song voice. "I'm just the backup laughter in case of existential emergency!"
She blinked.
"I'm what?"
"Never mind," it said, and spat out a wand. Not metaphorically. It literally coughed up a small, curved stick with a carved spiral at the top. Then, with a dramatic bow, the creature kicked it toward her.
"You look like someone who forgot how to laugh," it said.
Elara stared at the wand. Then at the creature. Then at the empty sky above her. Her chest burned from holding everything in.
"This isn't funny," she whispered.
"Nope," the creature agreed. "But sometimes, neither is survival."
Her fingers moved before her mind did. She picked up the wand.
And the moment she held it, the wand whispered something old. Something ancient. Something buried.
A spell born from people who laughed too hard for too long.
From people who died laughing.
From people who couldn't stop.
Risus Inferna.
Laughter from hell.
It didn't ask for her consent.
It just poured out of her, wild and broken. She laughed so hard she couldn't breathe. She laughed until her throat turned raw. Until her face twisted and her ribs hurt. She laughed at nothing. At everything.
She laughed at the goodbyes she never sent.
And for the first time in weeks...
She didn't feel like dying.
Just... numb.
Just... nothing.
***
Elara stopped laughing. But the silence that followed felt heavier than the noise.
She sat there for a while, slumped against the stone edge, breathing like someone who'd been dragged back from drowning. Her lips were cracked. Her jaw ached. Her throat stung like it had been scrubbed raw with wire.
The little yellow blob hadn't left. It sat beside her now, legs—or what vaguely resembled legs—swinging over the edge like they were sharing a sunset instead of surviving a breakdown.
"You good?" it asked.
She glared at it.
"No," she said hoarsely.
"Fair."
They sat in silence again. But not the painful kind. Not anymore.
"That wand," Elara whispered, her fingers still shaking, "what the hell is it?"
"Ah, that's a classic," the creature chirped. "Model R-13, early cursed series. Used to be a party trick, then a war weapon, then banned by three different kingdoms and one bakery. Pretty intense history."
Elara blinked at it. "You're joking."
"Constantly. It's my primary coping mechanism."
She stared down at the wand, now dull and quiet in her lap. It looked harmless. Smooth wood, a bit of sparkle at the spiral tip. The kind of toy a kid might pick up at a market stall. Not the kind of thing that nearly hijacks your soul and rewires your emotions with a maniacal laugh track.
"Why did you give it to me?"
The creature shrugged. Or wobbled, which might have been the same thing.
"You looked like you needed something loud enough to drown out whatever's inside your head."
She swallowed. That wasn't entirely wrong.
"Who are you?"
The blob puffed up with pride. "I'm Mirthrilon the Third. Former Head Jester of the Moonlight Court. Current freelance emotional intervention entity."
She stared.
"You can call me Moko."
"...Moko?"
"Yep."
"I hate you."
"I get that a lot."
Elara didn't smile. Not really. But her mouth twitched, which was the most her face had moved in weeks.
She didn't know what to do now. The plan had been simple: disappear. Quietly. Now she had a cursed wand in her lap and a talking blob named Moko bouncing beside her like this was just another Tuesday.
"You can't just show up and fix things," she said finally.
"I didn't fix anything," Moko replied. "I just gave you a louder distraction than your death wish."
Elara didn't respond.
She didn't want to admit he was right.
Moko suddenly stood up—if bouncing counts as standing—and turned toward her with all the seriousness a sentient gelatin cube could muster.
"You're not the first kid to end up here, you know," he said. "This place is like emotional gravity. It pulls in all the broken ones. And we all fall the same way."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean... what now?"
She looked at him. At the wand. At her own hands, which still trembled.
"I don't know."
"Good. That's the first honest answer anyone ever gives."
***
Elara didn't remember walking back.
One moment, she was sitting on the edge of the tower, drained and hollow. The next, she was inside the East Wing hallway, her feet damp from the morning dew, the wand still clenched in her hand like a broken tooth she forgot to spit out.
Moko bounced behind her, humming something off-key. It might've been a lullaby. Or a war anthem. Or both.
"I don't want to be seen like this," Elara muttered.
"You weren't planning to be seen at all," Moko replied.
He had a point.
Most of the academy was still asleep. But a few early risers floated down the corridor like ghosts in uniform. No one spoke. No one looked her in the eye. Not out of cruelty—out of habit. Elara wasn't known for being talkative. She was the quiet kid with the thousand-yard stare and the emotional availability of a wet rock.
And yet, she could feel it. The glances. The weight of their silence. The way her name lingered on the tip of their thoughts, like something sharp they didn't want to touch.
That's when she noticed someone standing near the notice board, staring at her without shame.
Theo.
He wasn't tall, but he stood like someone who knew exactly when he would die and had accepted it as background noise. His uniform was never ironed. His sleeves were too long. And he wore a necklace made from broken clock hands like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"You look worse than usual," he said calmly.
"Thanks."
"No problem."
Theo's magic wasn't flashy. He couldn't summon fire or turn invisible. What he had was worse: Death Timing—a cursed sense that allowed him to predict the exact moment someone would die.
Elara didn't know if he'd ever looked at her with it. She didn't want to know.
"You okay?" he asked. The words felt too soft coming from him. Like someone else had borrowed his voice.
"I'm fine," she lied.
He stared at her a little longer.
Then: "That's a weird wand."
She gripped it tighter.
"It's a loan," she said.
"From who?"
"The gelatinous mistake behind me."
Theo leaned sideways to look around her.
"Oh. That thing's real?"
Moko waved cheerfully. "Hi! I'm her emotional sidekick."
"I thought that was sarcasm," Theo said.
"It usually is."
The bell rang before Elara could explain—or lie—any further.
Students began shuffling into rooms, their faces dulled by routine and caffeine potions. Elara followed slowly, dragging her feet like they were still wet from last night's storm.
Theo walked beside her.
"You don't have to act like nothing happened," he said.
"I do, actually."
"Why?"
She didn't answer. Because she didn't know. Or maybe because saying it out loud would make it too real.
Behind them, Moko muttered to himself.
"This is gonna be fun."
***
Professor Maeren's classroom always smelled like burnt paper and lavender.
The walls were lined with scrolls older than most kingdoms. A dozen clocks ticked out of sync, each one set to a different hour, none of them correct. The windows never opened, and the candles never went out.
He stood by the board, dressed in layered robes the color of old ash. His face was calm, unreadable, like it had been carved from silence itself.
"Good morning," he said, without looking up. "Today's lesson is Memory Containment and the Consequences of Emotional Leakage."
No one responded.
Not out loud, anyway.
Theo slumped into his seat. Elara sat by the window, fingers still twitching faintly around the wand in her sleeve. Moko had vanished somewhere, either respecting the seriousness of the class or looking for snacks.
Professor Maeren turned.
His eyes landed on Elara.
Just for a second.
But it was enough.
Something shifted.
And in that tiny flicker of a moment, Elara realized that Maeren had seen everything. The tower. The laugh. The fall that never happened.
She felt cold.
Not the kind of cold that touches skin—but the kind that wraps itself around your spine and whispers, "Don't think I didn't notice."
"Let's begin," Maeren said.
He raised one hand. The room responded. Scrolls flew open mid-air, chalk lifted itself to the blackboard, and a faint hum filled the space like the memory of music.
Elara tried to focus.
But the wand kept pulsing against her arm.
Like it wanted to laugh again.
She pressed it down. Mentally, physically, emotionally. She refused to let it win.
But memory is a slippery thing.
Especially in Maeren's class.
All it took was a word. A sound. A glance.
And suddenly she was back at the tower's edge. Her legs dangling. Her throat raw. Her lungs tight from the pressure of not dying.
She blinked and the classroom flickered.
For one brief second, everyone around her was laughing. But their faces were twisted—too wide, too sharp. Their mouths opened impossibly far. Their eyes bled ink.
Then it was gone.
No one moved.
Theo was writing notes. The girl beside Elara was biting her pen. Maeren was mid-sentence, talking about mental wards and mnemonic collapse.
But Elara was shaking.
She hadn't cast anything. She hadn't spoken.
And yet... something was laughing through her.
She gripped the wand. Her nails dug into her skin. Her breath came short and fast. Her mind tried to make sense of it—maybe she was hallucinating, maybe it was leftover trauma, maybe it was—
"Miss Velintra?"
Her name cracked across the room like lightning.
Maeren was looking at her now.
And his voice was soft.
But behind it was a steel edge, like he was speaking from inside a glass prison.
"Would you like to share what just attempted to bleed through you?"
The room went still.
Theo stopped writing.
The clock behind her ticked once, then cracked.
And Elara felt something shift again.
Something inside her.
Something she hadn't invited.
***
There are two kinds of attention at Windvale Academy.
The kind you earn.
And the kind you survive.
Elara had never wanted either.
But now she had both.
Professor Maeren didn't press her for an answer. Not directly. He simply stared at her long enough for the silence to become a wound, then returned to the board as if nothing had happened.
But Elara knew better.
She could feel it.
Something had changed. The air around her was denser. Sharper. It coiled through the classroom like smoke that knew her name.
By the end of the lesson, three things had become clear.
One: she had broken something. Not visibly. Not loudly. But definitely.
Two: Maeren knew.
And three: so did Theo.
The rest of the day crawled by.
Her wand stayed quiet, but the weight of it never left. Like carrying a loaded joke that could go off at any time. She walked through the halls with a stiffness she couldn't hide, dodging eye contact and trying not to exist too loudly.
She failed.
By lunch, half the class was whispering.
By evening, someone had scrawled "Witch Freak" on her locker.
By nightfall, she found her bed soaked with saltwater. No explanation. No note. Just damp sheets and the smell of seaweed that wasn't from anywhere near campus.
Moko appeared again, dangling from the ceiling like a failed bat.
"First day back and already making waves," he said. "That's gotta be a record."
"Leave me alone," Elara muttered.
"You're never alone now," Moko replied with a grin. "Welcome to the other side of survival."
She rolled onto her side, pulling the blanket over her face.
"Don't talk to me."
"Alright," Moko said cheerfully. "But just so you know—your laugh almost pulled someone else through today."
Her breath caught.
"What?"
Moko's eyes blinked in the dark, glowing faintly like fungus on a forgotten tree.
"You're not the only one carrying something ugly," he said. "This place is full of people cracking quietly. Your joke just gave them permission."
Elara didn't respond.
She couldn't.
She lay still, the blanket heavy with moisture, her body colder than it had been in weeks.
Outside, a crow laughed like a child.
Inside, Elara didn't sleep.
Because something in her had already woken up.
And it was listening.
***