Sophie had come a long way from the quiet plains of Kansas. Below her stretched one of the busiest intersections in the country. Cars honked, pedestrians jostled, and towering buildings seemed to scrape the clouds. The city thrummed with energy and screamed as a relentless pulse of opportunity.

And yet, as alive as it seemed, a part of her missed home. The wide-open skies. The hush of wheat fields swaying under the wind. To someone like Sophie, home had been boring. But here, the world promised glamour, fame, and escape.

It was a chance to outrun everything she felt she had left behind.

Her friends were already climbing, globe-trotting, flaunting lives of wealth, love, and influence. Sophie felt perpetually a step behind, left scrambling for a claim to the world’s attention. And this academy: Eidolon — was her shot. Her only shot.

She stood before the academy’s polished doors, a building that gleamed like ivory and steel. Eidolon wasn’t just a school; it was a promise. A chance to be molded into something exquisite, to ascend from obscurity to stardom. Sophie’s car was barely holding itself together, her crumpled apartment which was so late on rent it was teetering on eviction, and the string of menial jobs she had scraped through with little left to show. She was sinking but here, she would be transformed into an Eidolon model.

Inside, Madame DuMont greeted her with a quiet smile. She was measured, poised, and a model of control. “Welcome, Sophie,” she said, her tone both warm and chilling in its precision. Before signing her contract, Sophie toured the academy. Students moved with grace bordering on inhuman, practicing balance, poise, and endurance. Mirrors lined the hallways, reflecting repetition after repetition — symmetry, perfection, reflection.

“This is where you will see yourself truly,” Madame DuMont explained. “Where your beauty will be understood… and perfected.”

Sophie was enthralled. The academy promised discipline, stillness, and mastery over one’s body, voice, and presence. Graduation meant a guaranteed place in the modeling industry, a permanent key to the doors Sophie had been knocking on her entire life.

Her dorm was modest but pristine. Sophie’s roommate, Mira, was bubbly and effervescent. She too, was excited to be part of this exclusive world. “I can’t believe we’re actually here,” Sophie said, more to herself than Mira.

A low, booming voice suddenly cut through the room from the intercom, crackling with static.

“Today, I witnessed the arrival of two shining stars. Follow the guidance of your instructors and of me, Mr. Quinn. The sky is the limit but let obedience and perfection be your only friends. Let the mirrors teach you loyalty.”

Sophie froze. Mira glanced around nervously. The words were simple, yet there was something unplaceable about them — an undercurrent that made the hairs on Sophie’s neck stand on end.

The first weeks passed in a haze of schedules, etiquette, and endless reflection. Miss Halloway, the perfect example of poise, showed the girls posture, manners, and runway walk. Dr. Gideon Marr instructed them on hormone therapy and the academy’s signature beauty injections.

“Elegance radiates from within,” he said, voice calm and clinical, “but perfection can be enhanced.”

Sophie hesitated at first. She had never been fond of needles. But the fear of falling behind, of never catching up to the perfection surrounding her, pushed her forward. When her body rejected the injections, Dr. Marr offered an alternative. A bitter elixir, no needles required.

Even so, the side effects were immediate. Nausea, dizziness, fever, and strange dreams haunted her nights. Dreams where she wandered the halls but always at night. The academy was empty yet alive. Shadows of faculty and students appeared, always with their backs turned, silent and watching. Sophie woke each morning with the sensation that she had just escaped danger. The question was danger of what exactly?

By the second week, the other girls began to change. Their smiles sharpened, their movements synchronized. Mira’s lightheartedness dimmed as her gaze grew distant. Sophie tried to mimic the other girls by adjusting her posture, her expressions, and her thoughts. She kept her secret of the elixir and her body’s rebellion keeping everything hidden, fearing expulsion.

A subtle, compulsive behavior began to appear among the students: scratching. Sophie noticed it first in Mira, then in every class. Fingers rubbed at the nape of their necks as if trying to remove something beneath the skin. Madame DuMont’s eyes followed each movement with meticulous attention, while Mr. Quinn’s voice echoed through the intercom. “Beauty is obedience. Obedience is beauty,” he intoned. The phrase repeated, day after day, slightly warped each time, and sinking into the girls’ minds.

Sophie’s own reflection betrayed her. In the hall of mirrors, her posture was perfect but her face displayed the stress of it all. The bags forming under her eyes from lack of sleep, pale skin from the nauestiousness of the elixir, and cheek bones more pronounced from her weight loss. She couldn’t keep anything down. The mirrors told the truth. A soft metallic hum vibrating at the edge of perception.

Weeks passed. Sophie’s appetite really waned. Her sleep continued to be haunted by dreams of the darkened academy, hallways twisting, lights flickering. Faces turned away. Only at the backroom did the figures prepare to reveal themselves, but only for a moment before she awoke. And when awoken, it was usually by Mr. Quinn’s morning calibration. But his scratchy voice blaring from her dorms intercom was beginning to sound more like inspirational decay.

The night of the ceremony arrived. White veils hung from the ceiling like wings. Candles lined the marble floors, flickering with a tension Sophie could almost taste. The scent of lilac clashed with metal and antiseptic. Every girl was perfect, porcelain and smiling, eyes blinking just enough to seem alive.

Dr. Marr’s voice was calm and precise. “Beauty is the final truth. Tonight, we carve perfection into being.”

The first girl, Mira, was led forward. Her laughter and warmth now gone, replaced by a cold, mechanical grin. A scalpel glinted in the candlelight, and when it sliced, a second face emerged beneath her hairline. From the back of her head another face emerged with its eyes rolling, mouth screaming. It was a grotesque mirror of her own beauty. In front, her perfect face. In the back, a twisted version. The audience of girls clapped, mechanical and synchronized, as if worshipping a god of their own perfection.

Sophie’s stomach turned. The scent of blood mixed with perfume. Her name came next. Her instincts screamed escape, but hands reached for her. Her friends. Her teachers. They joined together to restrained her. Madame DuMont’s elegance became terrifying as she revealed the horror beneath her wig: a monstrous, inhuman visage. And then she spoke, the voice unmistakable: Mr. Quinn. It was no coincidence Mr. Quinn was never seen in-person and when he spoke, Madame DuMont was never around.

“Do not fear it, child. Watch the others be remade.” Madame DuMont said as she turned around to reveal her darker side.

Each incision revealed the hidden truth: the academy’s perfection was a lie. Beneath each flawless exterior, a monstrous, screaming second face waited. The girls—her peers, once friends—were no longer human. Their bodies were vessels for this monstrous ideal, trained and honed to obedience, feeding on ambition and fear.

Sophie’s scream echoed against mirrored walls. The slice in the back of her head revealed nothing but bone. Her bodies rejection to the academy’s beauty injection and elixir saved her from becoming a vessel for evil but left her at the mercy of Dr. Marr.

Candles burst, red lights flaring, and silver instruments caught the light like wicked stars. But Sophie could not stop it. The ceremony ended in silence, broken only by Dr. Marr’s whisper:

“Perfection always finds a face.”

Sophie had sought fame, recognition, and escape. She had wanted to belong and shine. In the end, she learned the cost: at Eidolon Academy, perfection was predatory. And monsters wore faces that could kill ambition before it even bloomed.