School of Souls

This is a digital painting commission. It shows a young woman huddled against a tree trunk, her arm raised to protect herself. She has reddish hair and is very young, maybe fourteen. The ghost of a teen from the 1920's crouches next to her, an arm around her shoulder. She's wearing a flapper dress and looks determined. Over both of them looms a monster. It looks like a cross between an anglerfish and a bear.

When Juniper's dad died, it should've been the worst thing to ever happen to her. But then her mom ships her off to some boarding school in the Bighorn Mountains to wean her off her zolpidem addiction—which, hello, she only took because Dad died. The boarding school claimed to not only fix every kid who enters its doors, but also to turn them into first-rate sorcerers. Juniper wants to become a healer so nobody else's dad dies, but the kids who arrive at the Seramia Boarding School aren’t the same ones who graduate.

Something in those woods destroys souls. Ghosts haunt the school, waiting to take teenage bodies as soon as they're empty. If Juniper doesn't shut the school down, she and all the other freshmen will die a death so final they won't even dream of heaven. She seeks help from the Circle, the only organization that can put a stop to it, but it isn't the benevolent entity she's praying for.

Art commissioned from Kozz Draws.