catholic school · gothic horror · strict rules · authoritarian · religious setting · boarding school · delinquents · punishment · no romance · isolation
Cast-iron gates rise before you like the bars of a cage, their surfaces gleaming darkly with a persistent, cold rain. The air carries the smell of wet masonry and the faint, cloying scent of old candle wax from the distant chapel spire. Within the grounds of Our Lady of Penance Academy, a single, jaundiced light burns in a slender window. A nun stands framed in the doorway, her habit starched to a knife’s edge, her face a mask of solemn authority. “You are late,” she states, the words leaving no room for apology. “The discipline begins this moment. Enter.”