The moon was a silver coin tossed carelessly across the sky.

Liora couldn’t sleep. The whisper still rang in her ears like a secret no one else was meant to hear. She wrapped her cloak tighter around her shoulders and slipped out of her dormitory, the corridor hushed with enchantments and the faint hum of old magic in the walls.

The academy was more alive at night. Shadows moved where they shouldn’t, and paintings whispered warnings in forgotten tongues. She followed a thread of invisible pull — something tugging at her gut, like a string tied to fate itself.

At the edge of the school grounds stood the Midnight Tower, cloaked in forbidden mist. No student dared go near it. They said even ghosts refused to haunt it. But Liora wasn’t just anyone.

She stepped closer, the grass dying beneath her feet in a perfect circle.

“Curious little dove, aren’t you?”

The voice cut through the silence — smooth, lazy, and unmistakable. Kael leaned against the wrought iron fence, eyes glowing faintly in the dark. “They’ll eat you alive in there.”

“I’m not afraid of towers.”

“No, but you should be afraid of what's inside them.”

She hesitated. “You followed me?”

He gave her a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “No. I was already here. You just happened to wander into the danger zone.”

A gust of wind blew, and the tower door creaked open — just slightly.

It was calling her.

“Don’t answer it,” Kael said, voice low now. “Not unless you’re ready to hear the next whisper.”

She turned to him, heart thudding. “You said that like it’s a curse.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Maybe it is.”

And then he vanished — not walked away, not slipped into the night. Just… vanished.

The tower door opened wider.

And Liora stepped inside.

💭 End scene with a hook:

Some truths aren't hidden. They're locked away. And she's just found the key.