Nocticadia

In 1753, Lord Adderly, a British naval commodore, rows toward Dracadia Island to find it burned to ash, flocks of ravens circling overhead.

In 1753, Lord Adderly, a British naval commodore, rows toward Dracadia Island to find it burned to ash, flocks of ravens circling overhead. A dying acolyte boy stumbles from the charred trees, his robes soaked in blood, speaking of black worms spilling from the mouths of madness—creatures that commanded flames. Before the boy expires, he delivers a chilling revelation: Adderly and his men never arrived by boat. They came days ago with the priests and are dreaming. When they wake, they will find themselves tied to stakes, their flesh already searing. Adderly closes his eyes, and the first screams pierce the air. The ancient horror of Noctisoma on Dracadia Island predates the university by centuries.

A case study earns a scholarship to the island that holds answers

When Lilia was sixteen, her mother tried to drown her younger sister Bee in their Covington apartment bathtub. Lilia fought her off, but her mother then submerged herself—and long, black worms began pouring from her mouth and nose. Lilia passed out. She was told her mother committed suicide by slitting her wrists, that the worms were trauma-induced hallucinations. Four years later, a microbiology professor reads the fictional case study Lilia wrote about those worms and tells her they are real—a parasite called Noctisoma, studied exclusively at Dracadia University. He hands her a black envelope sealed in gold wax: a full scholarship to the only place that can explain what killed her mother.

Gothic spires and dark rumors greet Lilia at Dracadia University

Lilia boards the midnight train out of Covington with one suitcase holding everything she owns. After a ferry ride through fog to the dragon-shaped island, she arrives at a campus of weathered stone buildings, vine-covered towers, and gargoyles perched above manicured gardens. She's assigned to Crixson House—the dorm where, twenty years earlier, six women in a clinical study drowned themselves in a lake. Her new RA, Mel, warns her about Professor Bramwell, called Doctor Death by the student body: a pathologist whose father ran the botched study, who was the last person to see a missing student named Jenny Harrick alive, and who was attacked with sulfuric acid by her boyfriend. When Lilia first locks eyes with those copper irises, something other than fear takes root.

The Midnight Lab houses the exact parasites from Lilia's nightmares At midnight, a campus shuttle delivers students to Nocticadia—Bramwell's candlelit laboratory where infected purple moths flutter in glass domes and black worms squirm in bioluminescent tanks. Lilia recognizes the creatures instantly: the same parasites that slithered from her mother's mouth. Floors below,…