3. Ophelia

Ophelia arrives at Sorrowsong University and navigates the opening assembly, where she clashes with Alex over the swim team sign-up and discovers her name already listed there. After a tense campus tour marred by physical intimidation from other students, she reaches her dorm room in Nightshade Halls to find it deliberately arranged against her and a cryptic Hamlet quote pinned to her headboard—all signs of a deliberate antagonism toward her arrival.

Ophelia listens to Chancellor Carmichael's harsh welcome speech and focuses on joining the swim team as essential to her survival at the university. She confronts Alex at the sign-up sheet, where he challenges her for a position; during their heated exchange, she discovers her name is already written at the top of the swim team list in unfamiliar handwriting, unsettling her with the implication of being watched. After Carmichael cryptically warns her to "be very careful" around the Corbeau-Greens—the family she suspects caused her parents' deaths—Ophelia joins the Nightshade house tour led by Belladonna. En route through the castle and courtyard, she is violently attacked by twin Russian mafia students, Kirill and Sofia, who threaten her over a lake. Divya, another first-year, befriends her and explains the student body consists of children from criminal families attempting to distance themselves from their home lives. Arriving at Nightshade Halls, an isolated Elizabethan manor house, Ophelia explores its dark, candle-lit interior featuring a library, multiple bars, and a gym. She reaches her fourth-floor dorm room only to find it deliberately arranged against her comfort: her belongings moved to the far side, a knife on the bedside table, vodka bottles scattered, and a torn page from Hamlet pinned to her headboard with the quote "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." As she processes this threat, her bathroom door opens and a Russian-accented voice greets her, leaving her stomach plummeting.