Grey Duncan arrives at Redshore Boarding School with a scholarship, a suitcase, and a fear he refuses to name. The gates are too black, the halls too quiet and the Headmistress Dupuis feels like a threat disguised as a smiling face. Grey’s only refuge is the piano, a private practice room reserved “for him” like a cage dressed as a privilege. Then his roommate shows up: Minho Li, loud, warm, and impossibly normal, with a hand-drawn map to keep Grey from getting swallowed by the castle’s corridors. As Grey tried to survive classes, try outs, and the sharp-edged students who circle him like prey, small things begin to slip: symbols carved into doors, whispers in stairwells, shadows moving at the treeline. Redshore exists, all right. The questions haunt: what is the price that would be extracted in exchange for the desire to fit in? Will it let Grey leave unchanged?