fin
"all i do is finesse, man."
Ghost in the Halls
EPISODE 1
A
utumn clung to the campus like a bruise. The trees bled color, reds too sharp, oranges like fire left too long in the pan. Leaves scattered the walkways in papery drifts, curling like burnt pages beneath boots and wheels and the hesitant shuffle of students who couldn’t quite meet each other’s eyes. Halloween approached, but there was no celebration in it this year. The only masks worn were the ones that kept students from breaking in public. The only tricks played were the ones grief plays on memory.There were holes where people used to be. Students had gone missing, quietly at first, one by one, names whispered with dread. In the city, mutant disappearances were rising, chalked up to runaway rumors and bad neighborhoods, but no one believed that anymore. Not really. There were no signs. No reasons. Just absence, unexplained and growing.
Ezra Price had flown once. Everyone remembered that about him. The effortless way he used to lift off during practice, arms outstretched like some wingless angel who never feared the sky. He was a senior. A flier. A friend to some, a crush to others, a background fixture to a few, but now he was a symbol. That morning’s assembly etched it into them like a scar. Chancellor Monroe spoke gently, her voice even and strong, but it cracked on the edges if you listened hard enough. The teachers flanked the stage like mourners in suits, each one holding something back. No real details were shared, no official cause of death announced. But the students didn’t need them. They had seen it.
Ezra had vanished for seven days. No one knew where he had been. He came back quiet, wrong somehow, like someone who had worn the same skin but lost the person underneath it. He didn’t talk much. Didn’t sleep. His roommate said his hands shook, his eyes were distant, like he’d forgotten what his room looked like. Then, just after the first period, in full view of the quad, he climbed to the rooftop and jumped. And he didn’t scream until the wind took him. Some students said he looked peaceful, like the fall itself was a release.
The school had never been so quiet. Even the loud ones, the pranksters, the brash, the flirtatious—they moved through the day as if their laughter had been locked away. Grief settled over Xavier’s like a weighted blanket that no one could shake off. Some cried openly, sitting in circles in the gardens or lying on the dorm floors in shared silence. Others buried themselves in the gym, the library, anywhere their minds could outpace what their hearts didn’t want to process. But for all the heartbreak, something sharper crept underneath. Fear. No one knew where Ezra had been. No one knew what had been done to him. And now, the safest school for mutants in the world felt like a castle full of cracks.
When night fell that Friday, and the moon slipped behind the cloudbank like it, too, was too tired to watch, they gathered in the woods behind the school. Past the clearing, past the fencing. Past curfew. No permission had been given, but mourning didn’t ask for permission. A bonfire roared in the center of the hollow, flames licking upward into the crisp October air, sparks snapping like fireflies. Someone had dragged logs and stolen folding chairs. Others brought blankets and bags of stolen snacks. A few juniors had smuggled in whiskey and vodka and cheap wine coolers, and the red solo cups were already being filled when the first group arrived.
Ezra’s name had been carved into the side of a tree, the bark flaking where the blade had dug in. Someone had brought a boombox and was playing songs from his collection of CD’s—the one he made after breakups, full of melancholy songs and haunted melodies. Laughter cracked through the clearing from time to time, but it came too sudden, too high, as if daring someone to call it disrespectful. No one did. Because everyone understood. This was how grief worked for them. A flickering fire. A little rebellion. An aching need to feel anything that wasn’t that moment on the rooftop.
And in the corners, just outside the brightest ring of firelight, something else began to circulate. A small metallic vial, passed from hand to hand with murmured curiosity. Kick. The name was whispered like a dare, like a secret too sharp to say aloud. No one knew where it came from, but everyone knew what it did. One hit and it lit you up from the inside. Like adrenaline had teeth. Like your skin finally fit the way it should. Mutants, even with their superior immune systems, felt its bite. Some said it made your powers spike. Others said it made your trauma vanish for a little while. Some just wanted to not feel hollow anymore.
And so they took it. Not all, but enough. Some out of curiosity, others from pain, some just because they didn’t want to be the only one still sober in the face of Ezra’s ghost. Vials moved through the clearing like a myth, and the firelight danced on the faces of students who weren’t ready to be adults, but no longer got to be kids.
That night, the school slept in silence, unaware of the rites being performed in its woods. Unaware that grief had teeth now. That fear had begun to turn to recklessness. That something was circling them, closing in.
Ezra Price was gone.
But the smoke still rose.
