MYSTERY OF SAINT HILLER DORMITORY

Linda Grey and Viktor Alekseevich—her mother’s business associate—were tangled together on the bed, not a single thread of clothing between them.

“Brian!” Linda shrieked, her voice slicing through the room like broken glass.

Viktor, equally stunned, scrambled off the bed, tripping over the corner of a throw blanket as he tried to conceal himself behind the narrow frame. His movements were awkward and pitiful, as if shame had made his body uncooperative.

No one had expected Brian to come home that early.

His breath hitched. His jaw clenched. The sight had scorched itself into his mind in an instant—indelible and sickening. His mother, the only parent he'd ever known, had always been meticulous, reserved, cautious. But there she was, exposed in the most vulnerable of ways—with *him*.

Frantically, Linda reached for the sheet, her hands fumbling, tangled in panic and fabric. Viktor crouched like a criminal caught red-handed, only his head and hunched shoulders peeking out from the far side of the bed.

Brian couldn’t stand it. He turned away, his chest pounding, his face burning with anger and humiliation. He heard his mother’s voice trying to catch him like a net:

“Brian, wait—please… let me explain…”

But her words were brittle. They snapped before reaching his ears.

He was already halfway down the hallway, storming past framed family photos, past the open kitchen where the kettle still steamed, through the backdoor—slamming it so hard the hinges groaned.

The backyard air hit him like a cold slap. The sting of betrayal carved itself deeper with every breath. He broke into a run, his feet crunching against the gravel path that led to the garden’s edge. And there it stood: the small oak cabin.

Weatherworn. Quiet. Always waiting.

A relic from another time, the cabin had been James Nkono’s domain for as long as Brian could remember. With its saloon-style doors and crooked porch light, it was like something pulled out of a different world—one untouched by lies and heartbreak.

Brian pushed the doors open hard enough for them to slam against the walls inside. The sudden noise startled the silence, but the room remained still—dust suspended in the air like forgotten thoughts. The smell of dry earth, tobacco, and aged timber hit him in waves.

He trudged across the creaking floorboards and stopped at the threshold of the bedroom.

Through the narrow opening, he spotted him.

James Nkono sat on the edge of the bed, cross-legged, his eyes closed in quiet meditation. His breathing was deep and steady, like the ocean at dawn. It wasn’t indifference. It was ritual. He had taught Brian long ago: never interrupt a man when he’s listening to the silence.

So Brian didn’t enter.

Instead, he collapsed onto the old bamboo couch in the front room. The foam inside had long since surrendered to time, and it sighed under his weight. He didn’t care. He lay back, arms folded beneath his head, eyes locked on the wooden beams of the ceiling.

There was something comforting in the cracks above. They didn’t pretend to be whole.

He let the silence hold him for a moment. Not in comfort, but in shared ache.

His eyes drifted across the room to the gold-framed photograph: a tall, elegant man in ivory riding gear, standing beside a white stallion. There was something haunting in his expression. Poised. Controlled. As if keeping a hundred secrets behind a calm smile.

**His father.**

Silvester Alexander.

A ghost of a man. A name with no voice. Brian had grown up hearing fragmented myths—contradictions, shadows, stories full of blanks and gaps.

A hero. A deserter. A liar. A savior.

The man who vanished before Brian was born.

Brian stared at the photo, a whisper rising in his mind:

*Why did you leave?*

*Why did no one speak your name without hesitation?*

Then, breaking through the stillness like a drumbeat in a cathedral, came a voice. A deep, rich voice that had comforted Brian since childhood.

“Silvester Alexander…”

Brian jolted upright.

“Grandpa…”

James Nkono stood in the doorway. His white curls framed a face carved with age and memory. His eyes were steady but solemn, like a priest preparing for a confession.

He walked toward Brian with the grace of a man used to walking between worlds—between truths and unspoken history.

He sat beside the boy and exhaled heavily. Not from fatigue, but from the weight of what needed to be said.

“Grandpa…” Brian began again, voice barely above a whisper. “Tell me. About my father.”

James said nothing at first. He looked at Brian—not as a child, but as someone ready. Or nearly.

“What will you do once you know?” he asked quietly.

“I want to find him,” Brian replied. There was no hesitation. But his tone held no warmth.

“For what purpose?”

Brian turned away. “Because I can’t stay here anymore. Not with *him* in the house. Not with Viktor.”

James studied him for a moment.

“Don’t blame them,” he said gently, as if trying to lower a fire with water.

Brian snapped his head back. “Are you defending them?”

“I’m saying… people make choices when they feel abandoned.”

“She didn’t just *feel* abandoned,” Brian shot back. “She *wasn’t*! She had me! She didn’t have to… do *that* with him.”

James didn’t flinch. “They’re married.”

The words hit Brian like a bat to the chest.

“What?”

“They’ve been married for three months. Your mother asked you to visit Bittenvallen during the ceremony. You refused.”

Brian’s mind raced. He remembered. The random invite. The vague message. He hadn’t even read it fully before deleting it.

He had turned down an invitation to his own mother’s wedding.

“And she never told me…” His voice cracked.

“Maybe she was afraid you’d hate her,” James said. “Or maybe… she knew you already did.”

Brian buried his face in his hands. The shame of it all—the betrayal, the secrecy—crushed him like a falling ceiling.

“I can’t believe this,” he whispered.

They sat in silence.

Then Brian turned again, and this time, his voice was like a blade.

“Grandpa. Tell me the truth. Was my father a traitor?”

James’s body stiffened. A shadow passed over his face. His back straightened, and his fingers curled slightly against his knee.

“Who told you that?” he asked.

“No one,” Brian said. “But everyone acts like it’s true. They change the subject when I ask. They pretend they didn’t hear. Even Mom.”

James stood up, slowly, walking toward the window. Outside, the sky had begun to darken—soft orange giving way to a moody blue. The garden swayed gently, as if waiting.

“I told you once,” James said, his voice low. “Silvester left. And he never came back. That much is true.”

“But *why*, Grandpa?”

James took a breath. Then another. And then said, “Because he saw something he was never supposed to see.”

Brian’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

James turned to face him.

“Your father was no ordinary man. And Saint Hiller was no ordinary place.”

Brian blinked. “Saint Hiller?”

James nodded. “The last place your father was ever seen.”

He walked back to the couch, sat beside Brian again, and his voice lowered to a near-whisper.

“There are truths buried in that castle, Brian. Some meant to stay hidden forever. But if you’re asking these questions… maybe it’s time you find them.”

Brian’s heart thundered in his chest.

James reached for a small drawer beneath the coffee table and pulled out an old envelope. Its edges were worn, the paper yellowing. He handed it to Brian.

Inside was a faded photograph. A younger Silvester, standing in front of a grand castle. The plaque read: *Saint Hiller Institute, Belgorov.*

And scrawled in sharp ink on the back:

**“If I vanish, tell my son to finish what I started.”**

Brian looked up, his breath caught in his throat.

“What did he start?” he asked.

James Nkono, for the first time in years, looked afraid.

“Something that could destroy everything... or save what’s left.”