“Finn, are you okay?”

  He wiped his sleeve across his neck, winced, then glanced toward the wrecked classroom.

  “You were right,” he muttered. “It was Lavinia. She stole the amulet. I should’ve listened you instead of going out to catch our project.”

  “Elaborate,” Elvira said sharply.

  “She set the mice on me. I made it to the spare classroom where I’d left the cage. Tried to peel them off one by one. Then the amulet cracked. Control snapped. They stopped attacking — but now they’re locked in there, running wild.”

  Elvira swore under her breath.

  I stepped in.

  “Are you okay, by the way? You look… aggressively bitten. That sparkly psycho literally sicced the mice on you.”

  “It’s just bites,” Finn muttered, pale but stubborn. “I’ve had worse.”

  Only now Elvira seemed to notice me.

  “And who are you?”

  Not hostile. Just cautious. Like someone used to identifying threats before they bite.

  "I'm Marina," I said, slightly on edge. "But my friends call me Malinka."

  Her gaze flicked over me once — quick, sharp, thorough.

  “You’re new.”

  “That obvious?”

  “You’re weird,” she said plainly. “Are you a succubus or something?”

  “Outworlder,” I corrected, feeling more than a little out of place.

  Her expression shifted instantly.

  “Holy unlife. Seriously?”

  "Straight up. From another world."

  She stared at me a second longer.

  “Well,” she said slowly, “that explains a lot.” Then she turned back to Finn.

  “Finn, you need some healing balm.”

  “Our lab,” he reminded her, wincing as he rolled his shoulder. “If we don’t return the mice, we fail the project.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Elvira grimaced. “Right. Academic survival first. Any idea how to catch them?”

  “The amulet’s broken,” Finn said. “We’ll have to go old-school. By hand.”

  I repeated faintly, “By hand?”

  They were already heading down the corridor, and I hesitated only for a moment before following.

  The logic was simple. In this charming new dimension, I had so far encountered:

  — one necromancer who had killed me and resurrected me like it was a clerical error,

  — one glittering psychopath who weaponised laboratory rodents,

  — and two people who, despite everything, had not attempted to murder, dissect, curse, or emotionally dismantle me.

  Statistically speaking, Finn and Elvira were the safest option available.

  Yes, I was afraid of mice. Deeply. Yes, the castle looked like it specialised in untimely deaths and moral ambiguity. But between wandering alone through a gothic nightmare and sticking close to the only two people who hadn’t tried to maim me, the choice was obvious.

  We stopped outside another classroom at the end of the corridor. The door was shut, but faint scratching and intermittent thuds drifted through the wood, followed by what sounded suspiciously like glass rolling across a surface.

  Finn pushed the door open cautiously.

  Inside was controlled chaos. Overturned stools, a crooked desk, an open cage abandoned mid-plan. And mice — everywhere. They darted across shelves, launched themselves between tables, skittered under cabinets with manic determination.

  “Well,” I said weakly, surveying the scene. “This seems entirely reasonable.”

  A mouse shot across the floor and vanished under a cupboard.

  Elvira rolled up her sleeves with unnerving composure. “Spread out. We corner them toward the cage.”

  Finn grabbed the cage and stepped inside.

  I remained at the doorway for half a second too long, staring at the room.

  "Damn it," I sweared, nearly jumping on a desk. My instincts screamed, but I tried to look cool. If I was going to survive in a place where undead mice were just part of the labwork, I had better get used to it. "Isn’t there a way to lure them back?"

  My hand brushed something in my pocket — a half-soggy, slightly smushed Snickers bar. How it had survived my interdimensional plunge, I had no clue. But desperate times...

  “Here. Maybe they like chocolate?”

  Elvira raised an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth twitching.

  “Zombie mice don’t eat chocolate. They prefer carrion. Dead flesh.”

  I froze.

  “Excuse me?”

  “They’re not predators,” she added calmly, as if discussing dietary restrictions. “They’re scavengers. Without the amulet directing them, they’re not attacking. They’re just… disoriented.”

  As if to demonstrate, one of the mice ran straight into a chair leg, paused, then bolted in the opposite direction with dramatic confusion.

  “See?” Finn muttered. “No control signal. They don’t know what to do.”

  “Brilliant,” I said faintly. “So they’re not trying to kill us. They’re just running around looking for something that’s already dead.”

  Finn glanced at me, then at the mice.

  “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “if you’d like to be helpful, you could volunteer.”

  I narrowed my eyes, slowly tore the wrapper and tossed the piece toward the cage.

  For a second, nothing happened.

  Then one mouse stopped. Sniffed. Twitched.

  Another followed.

  And to everyone’s visible confusion, they swarmed the chocolate. They pounced on the candy like starved gremlins at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

  Finn’s jaw dropped. "This... this is incredible! Have we actually raised undead mice that can digest normal food?! This could change everything!"

  Elvira looked intrigued. She crouched by the cage, mumbling arcane gibberish, pulled out a notebook, and started sketching something.

  “Fascinating… we’ll have to run tests,” she murmured.

  Then she looked at me.

  “Thanks, Malinka. I think we’re good here. Want someone to show you around?”