Leo Vance's life felt like a movie stuck on repeat, and it wasn't a very good movie to begin with. His alarm would scream at him at six in the morning. He'd smack it off, stare at the stained ceiling for a few minutes, and then drag himself out of his lumpy bed. The floor was always cold. His tiny apartment in the oldest part of the city was a collection of grey walls, secondhand furniture, and the faint, permanent smell of damp.
His breakfast was cheap coffee that tasted like dirt and toast that was usually a little burnt. He'd eat it standing by the window, looking down at the same grey street, watching the same people rush off to their own boring lives. After that, it was the bus ride to the warehouse. The job was the worst part. For eight hours a day, he'd lift heavy boxes, scan labels with a beeping gun, and pack things to be shipped off to people who had lives interesting enough to order stuff online. His boss, a man named Henderson, had a permanent scowl and only ever spoke to him to tell him he was working too slow.
It was the kind of tired that got into your bones. By the time he got home, the sun was going down, and all he had the energy for was to heat up some instant noodles or a frozen pizza. He'd eat in front of his old, buzzing television, watching shows about people going on adventures, falling in love, or doing something that mattered. It felt like watching another species. He was eighteen years old, but he already felt ancient and worn out. He was an orphan, had been since he was a kid, and had aged out of the foster system with a few hundred dollars and a list of cheap apartments. He was completely, utterly alone.
He often wondered if this was it. Was this his whole story? A short, boring book about a guy who worked at a warehouse until he got too old and then just… stopped? He wanted more. He didn't know what 'more' was, but he felt it like an ache in his chest—a deep-seated hunger for something, anything, else.
One Tuesday night, after a particularly awful day at work where a whole pallet of ceramic garden gnomes had to be re-stacked by hand, he was slumped on his lumpy sofa. The TV was mumbling about some celebrity drama he didn't care about. The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the old refrigerator.
That's when things got weird.
The lamp on his end table flickered violently. It buzzed, a nasty, electric sound, and then went out. The TV screen dissolved into a mess of black and white static. Leo sat up straight, annoyed. A power surge, probably. He was about to get up to check the fuse box when a soft, green light started to glow in the middle of the room.
It wasn't coming from anywhere. It just appeared in the air, a swirling ball of light the size of his fist. It spun for a second, silent and strange, and then it vanished. In its place, sitting right on his scuffed coffee table where there had been nothing but a pizza box lid, was an envelope.
Leo just stared, his heart suddenly beating like a drum. He looked at the windows. They were locked. The door was chained. Nobody had come in. He slowly got to his feet and crept towards the table, half expecting the letter to bite him.
It looked ancient. The paper—or parchment, maybe—was thick and creamy, nothing like the paper used for bills or junk mail. There was no stamp, no address. On the front, his name, 'Leo Vance', was written in a beautiful, flowing script with ink that looked like liquid silver. It seemed to glow faintly in the dim light of the room. The envelope was sealed shut with a blob of dark red wax, and pressed into the wax was a strange and detailed symbol: a dragon, a demon, and a large bird twisted together around a sword.
This was crazy. A prank? Who would go to all this trouble? His hands were shaking a little as he picked it up. The parchment felt warm to the touch. He carefully broke the wax seal. It didn't crack like normal wax; it crumbled into a fine, sparkling dust that disappeared before it even hit the table. He pulled out the single sheet of paper inside and unfolded it.
The writing was the same as on the front, all elegant silver swirls that were surprisingly easy to read.
To the Bearer of this Invitation,
Your presence is hereby required at the Elysian Academy of Ascended Beings. Your exceptional potential has been recognized, and a place has been reserved for you amongst the next generation of leaders, mages, and warriors.
To accept your place, stand before the oldest oak in Blackwood Park at the stroke of midnight. Present this letter to the shadow it casts.
Do not be late. Destiny does not wait.
He read the words over and over. Elysian Academy of Ascended Beings? Mages and warriors? It sounded like the description of a video game. His "exceptional potential" had been recognized? The only thing he was exceptional at was being ignored. It had to be a joke. A very weird, high-effort joke.
But as he stood there in his silent, lonely apartment, a tiny, fragile bit of hope began to push through the doubt. His life was a dead end. He had nothing. No family, no real friends, no future. If he went to the park and nothing happened, what would he lose? A little sleep? His dignity? He didn't have much of that left anyway.
But if it was real…
That thought was a spark in the darkness. If this letter, this impossible, magical letter, was actually real, it was the escape he had been dreaming of his whole life. It was a chance.
He spent the next few hours pacing his apartment, the letter clutched in his hand. His logical brain told him he was being an idiot. But his heart, the part of him that was so starved for something more, was screaming at him to go. By eleven o'clock, he had made his decision. He put on his worn-out jacket, shoved the letter into his pocket, and left.
Blackwood Park was dark and empty at this hour. The city lights cast long, spooky shadows through the trees. Leo found the oldest oak easily enough. It was a massive, gnarled old thing right in the center of the park, a local landmark. He stood in front of it, feeling like the world's biggest fool. It was cold, and the minutes ticked by slower than he thought possible. He checked his phone. 11:58.
When the clock on the distant City Hall tower began to ring for midnight, the sound echoing across the quiet park, Leo's stomach did a nervous flip. He pulled the letter out. On the twelfth and final chime, he took a deep breath and stepped forward into the deep shadow cast by the huge tree. He held the letter out in front of him, feeling ridiculous.
"Uh… here?" he whispered to the shadow.
For a long, painful moment, nothing happened. The shadow was just a shadow. The night was just the night. Disappointment, heavy and familiar, settled in his gut. Of course. What did he expect? Magic wasn't real.
He was about to turn and go home when the air grew heavy and still. The faint sounds of city traffic faded to nothing. The shadow at his feet began to darken, turning from a simple grey-black into a deep, pure black that seemed to swallow the light. It began to move, not like a normal shadow, but like thick, black liquid. It peeled up from the grass and rose into the air, twisting and shaping itself into a perfect archway, a doorway made of solid night. A low, humming sound filled the air, a vibration he could feel in his teeth.
Leo stared, his jaw hanging open. It was real. It was all real. Fear and excitement warred inside him. This was it. The point of no return. He could turn back now and go back to his grey life, or he could step through that door into… something else.
He didn't even have to think about it. He took the first step of his new life and walked through the archway.
The feeling was a total shock to the system. It was like being pulled apart and put back together in a split second. A blast of information and sensation flooded his mind. When he could finally focus, the park was gone.
He was standing on a floating slab of white marble. The world around him was breathtaking and impossible. The sky was a deep purple, like at dusk, but it was lit by two suns. One was the familiar yellow sun he knew, but hanging next to it was a second, smaller sun that shone with a brilliant silver light. All around him were impossibly tall towers made of gleaming white or polished black stone. They soared so high he couldn't see their tops. Bridges made of what looked like hard, glowing light connected the towers and the floating islands of green grass that dotted the sky. Waterfalls fell from the edges of these islands, the water catching the light of the two suns and creating dozens of shimmering rainbows.
The air itself felt different. It was crisp and clean and hummed with a strange energy that made his skin tingle. And then there were the students. Everywhere he looked, there were young people walking and talking, but they weren't normal. He saw a boy with huge, feathery brown wings folded on his back, chatting with a girl who had small, pointy horns curling from her forehead. A group of students with long, elegant, pointed ears sat under a tree, reading from books that floated in the air in front of them. He was an alien here. A plain, boring human in a world of living myths and legends.
The sheer awe of it all was quickly being swamped by a rising tide of panic. He didn't belong here. It was like a stray dog wandering into a royal palace. He tried to make himself look smaller, to not draw attention, as he started walking aimlessly down a glowing pathway, just trying to blend in.
He was so busy staring at a boy who had a tail with a tuft of fur on the end that he wasn't looking where he was going. He stumbled and bumped right into someone.
"Oh, man, I'm so sorry," Leo mumbled, looking up.
The person he'd run into was tall and slender, with skin so pale it was almost white. His long hair was the color of silver, and his clothes were a perfectly tailored black uniform that looked incredibly expensive. But it was his eyes that made Leo freeze. They were a bright, shocking red, like drops of blood, and they were staring down at Leo with an expression of pure, cold disgust.
The lively atmosphere around them died instantly. All the chatter and laughter stopped. Everyone turned to watch. The silver-haired boy looked down at the spot on his sleeve where Leo had bumped him, and he sneered as if Leo were a piece of trash that had just soiled him.
"What is this filth?" the boy said, his voice quiet and smooth, but full of venom. "A human? How did a disgusting little pest like you manage to crawl into the sacred halls of this academy?"
Leo felt a chill go down his spine. The way he said the word "human" made it sound like the worst insult in the world. Leo fumbled in his pocket and held up the letter like a shield. "I got an invitation! It told me to come. My name's Leo—"
The boy snatched the letter out of his hand. He gave it a quick, contemptuous glance. A cruel smile played on his lips. "This invitation is for Lord Leonidas von Dracul, a noble of the great vampire houses. You are not him. You are nothing."
The world seemed to tilt under Leo's feet. A mistake. It was all a horrible, terrible mistake. "I… I don't understand. My name is Leo Vance, they must have sent it to the wrong person."
"They made a mistake," the vampire agreed, his red eyes glowing faintly. "A mistake I am about to fix." He let the invitation drop from his fingers, and it turned into black ash before it even hit the ground. "My name is Kaelen. It is a name of noble standing. You should feel honored that it is the last one you will ever hear."
Pure terror, cold and sharp, gripped Leo. He looked around desperately, hoping for a teacher, an adult, anyone to step in. But the other students just watched. Some looked bored. Some looked interested, the way you might watch a cat toying with a mouse. No one was going to help him.
"Please, just let me leave," Leo begged, his voice cracking as he backed away.
Kaelen just smiled. Then he disappeared. One moment he was standing ten feet away, and the next he was right in front of Leo, his ice-cold hand wrapped around Leo's throat, lifting him slightly off his feet.
"This is a school for the powerful, the magical, the pure," Kaelen whispered, his voice right next to Leo's ear. "There is no room for weakness. No room for humanity." He brought his other hand up, and Leo watched in horror as his perfectly manicured fingernails grew long, sharp, and black as night. Kaelen pressed the points of these claws against Leo's chest. "This is your first lesson. And your last. Know your place."
Leo tried to scream, but no sound came out. A blinding, searing pain shot through his chest as the claws sank in with sickening ease. The world started to go blurry. He felt his warmth, his energy, his very life being pulled out of him, flowing into the monster that held him. His legs gave out, and Kaelen held him up for another second before casually dropping his body to the marble path.
He lay there, dying. The beautiful, impossible world faded to grey. The faces of the students watching him were the last things he saw. Indifferent. Uncaring. His grand adventure had lasted for about five minutes. It was a cruel joke. He closed his eyes as the last of his life slipped away into darkness.
It should have been the end. An empty, silent nothing.
But in that total darkness of death, something new appeared. A line of glowing blue text hovered in the void where his mind used to be. A calm, computerized voice spoke, not with sound, but directly inside his consciousness.
[Mortal Host has Perished]
[Condition Met: Unjust Death in a High-Mana Environment]
[Validating Soul Signature... Validation Complete]
[Activating the Progenitor System...]
[Reconstructing Host Soul... Success]
[Reconstructing Host Body... Beginning Process]
[Welcome, Heir.]