The Beast's Arrival

The air in the Grand Hall of the Academy of Arcane Arts, usually thick with the scent of ancient parchment and slightly burnt toast (a casualty of a first-year’s experimental breakfast spell), suddenly went *wrong*. It wasn’t just a bad smell; it was a *feeling*, like someone had just cranked the world’s thermostat down to ‘arctic chill’ and simultaneously turned off all the lights. A collective gasp rippled through the assembled students, who had been in various states of academic ennui, from Grumble meticulously polishing his wand to Boy attempting to levitate a perfectly good apple into his mouth and failing spectacularly.

Then, the shadows themselves began to writhe. Not the polite, predictable shadows cast by the afternoon sun slanting through the stained-glass windows, but deep, inky tendrils that seemed to detach themselves from the walls, pooling and coalescing in the center of the hall. It was as if the very concept of darkness had decided to take a physical form, and it was not happy.

Professor Eldrin, who had been mid-sentence explaining the finer points of transmutational decay (a topic that, frankly, could put a dragon to sleep), froze. His usually twinkling eyes widened, and a very un-professor-like noise, something between a squeak and a strangled duck, escaped him. “By the beard of Merlin’s less-successful cousin!” he sputtered, his meticulously maintained beard seeming to bristle with alarm.