For a moment, the plan had felt real.
They had tied their boots. Grabbed flashlights. Katharina had even traced a rough layout of the school from memory, marking potential exits and paths to the admin office. Seraphina, though weak, had insisted on helping—she used her hairpin to sketch paths in the dust of the wooden desk, elegant hands trembling.
But then they opened the curtain again.
And all hope bled out.
In the courtyard below, the last of the screams had faded into silence—but it was not peace. No. It was hunger. Dozens of bodies moved, slowly, wrong. Girls in pristine uniforms dragged broken limbs, twitching unnaturally. One of them had long, jet-black hair matted with blood. Another's jaw hung open, unhinged, her neck bent sideways as if it had snapped but never stopped moving.
"I know her," Monika whispered. "She used to braid my hair during chapel."
A girl slammed against the window of another dorm room across the courtyard. The sound was dull, wet. Another joined her. Then a third. Banging. Scratching. Pressing their bloody hands against the glass like they knew someone was inside.
Henriette backed away from the window. "We're not going anywhere."
"No," Katharina said, voice tight. "We're not."
The dorm room was suddenly too small. Too warm. Too human.
"We need to block the door," Henriette said, already dragging one of the desks toward it. "I don't care if they can't talk anymore. They remember how to move."
Seraphina tried to stand but nearly collapsed. "Don't—don't move the bed. We'll need it."
"I'm not sleeping tonight," Monika muttered.
"We'll all sleep eventually," Katharina said. "That's the danger."
They worked quickly. Quietly. The vanity was shoved against the door. Henriette cracked the legs off a wooden chair to make makeshift batons. Katharina snapped off one of the bedposts—heavy, iron-tipped—and handed it to her like a knight passing a sword.
Seraphina held a metal ruler. "I'll stab someone in the throat with it if I have to," she said with the smallest smile.
There was a grim kind of laughter.
And then the silence returned.
By the time darkness fell completely, the school was no longer a place of learning. It was a mausoleum.
Not a sound outside. Not a scream. Not even the dragging of feet.
But they knew the monsters were still there. Waiting.
"What is this?" Monika whispered. "Why did it only happen to them?"
"Maybe it's something in their bodies," Henriette muttered, sitting on the floor with her back to the wall. "Something genetic. Hormonal. I don't know."
"No one knows," Katharina said. "And if they did… they didn't tell us."
Seraphina lay on the bed now, her hand resting on her wrapped wound. "Two days ago, we were at morning prayer. Now we're in hell."
Katharina looked out at the courtyard again. No moon tonight. Just darkness.
"Hell wears our uniform," she said softly.
That night, they slept in shifts. Or at least tried.
Henriette sat with the iron bedpost across her lap, staring at the door. Seraphina murmured something in her sleep, twitching lightly. Monika curled up next to her sister, one hand still clutching a flashlight.
And Katharina sat at the desk, listening to the silence outside.
It was the kind of silence that had teeth.
Tomorrow, they'd have to decide what to do. But tonight?
Tonight, they survived.