Through the mirror, he found himself in a strange maze-like garden. He looks all around at the beautiful scenery, then notices a strange sight.
"Hurry and paint the roses red! Hurry before the flowers wither!" Shouted a trio of what looked like card people, as they were painting a bush of white roses red.
"Hurry, hurry! We have to paint them all red!" Said the Ace.
'Paint... the roses? This, looks familiar. But why?' He thought as he watched. Just then, a young girl with blonde hair and a ribbon walks over.
"Why do you have to paint the white roses red?" She asked, startling the cards.
"Why you ask? The truth is we made a mistake and grew white ones." The two, of clubs he noticed, replied.
"The queen loves only red. If she sees white, she'll have our heads!" Shouts Ace.
"Really?" The girl asked confused. Yeah, that was odd.
"That's right. Therefore, we're painting the roses." The Three of Clubs says.
'Wait a minute... I know where I've seen this before... This is the famous rose painting of "Alice in Wonderland". Wait, if those are the card guards, that would mean that girl is...' He trails off in thought.
"Alice?" He spoke. "Alice! AH!" He tries to call out but was suddenly pulled away.
"AH!" He shouts as he wakes up to a loud banging sound. "What the-? Oh, it was just a dream." He sighs, then notices his surroundings. "Oh, right. I'm in a world called Twisted Wonderland." He remembers, then notices the book on his legs. The Disney book of Alice in Wonderland.
"Oh right, I was reading, that explains the weird dream." He recounts as he picks up the book, then is startled by a knock on the door. "Huh? Is someone at the door?" He asks as he stands.
"Mmm, hey, Isaac. It sounds like we have a late night visitor." Grim grumbles, still half asleep. Isaac attempts to hold in his laughter when he sees the cat curled up to Red. They then hear the knock again. "What? Is it those ghosts again? They just don't know when to quit, do they?" The feline asks.
"I'll go see who it is." Isaac says and walks out the room, then down the stairs to the front door, hearing as the knocking grows louder. "Alright, alright, I'm coming. Hold your horses." He calls and opens the door.
"Do you have any idea what time it is? Could this seriously not wait until—Huh? Ace?" He begins then cuts of when he sees the red haired boy. That wasn't the only strange thing, as around the boy's neck was a familiar collar.
"I'm never going back to Heartslabyul. Starting today, I'm joining your dorm!" He announces. What?!
"What's all this noise? What the-?! Ace!? You-you have a collar!?" Grim exclaims as he comes down. The three move to the lounge to talk about what's going on.
"What's going on? That's the same that red haired upperclassmen kid put around me at the entrance ceremony." Grim says. indeed it was the same collar.
"He's right, it's the same. What happened, Ace?" Isaac states then asked.
"I, ate a tart." The boy replies. Huh?
"You, ate a tart and collared for it?" The black haired boy asks.
"Yup! Just that!" Ace confirms. "When we got to our dorms, I got hungry, so I went down to the kitchen to grab some food. I looked into the fridge and found three whole tarts just sitting there chilling. I didn't think anyone would notice just one piece missing, but then the Dorm Leader shows up, calling me a thief. Then the next thing I know, I'm collared and can't use my magic." He explains.
"Tart, thief? That's sounds strangely familiar, but I don't remember where I heard it from. Either way..." Isaac trails off in thought.
"You're both in the wrong." Grim voices his opinion.
"What?! Isn't sealing my magic just for stealing a single slice of tart going too far?!" Ace exclaims.
"Yes, but stealing is still stealing. Either, you did deserve to be punished." Isaac states in reply.
"What?! You're supposed be on my side! For a mage, having your magic sealed is like your arms and legs getting chained up! And there were three whole! Three, whole, tarts! There's no way he could eat them all by himself! There has to be a limit to narrow minded you can be!" The red boy protests.
"I'm just stating the facts. Sure, sealing your magic for eating a tart might have been a little excessive, but, who's to say he didn't also hear about both the statue and chandelier incidents." The black haired boy retorts and the other boy froze.
"Not to mention, if there were whole tarts in the fridge... Could they have been by chance, for a party. Maybe someone's birthday." Grim theorizes.
"That would explain why he was upset. I will admit sealing your magic wasn't fair, but you are also responsible and will have to apologize for it." Isaac states.
"Mmm... Fine. I guess you're right, but you at least have to come with me when I do tomorrow. For now, I'm staying here tonight." The boy complies then states.
"You're seriously staying the night then?" The cat sighs. "All the rooms except our are still a total mess. So clean a room for yourself." He says next.
"Bleh! I'm not cleaning." Ace refused then turns to Isaac. "Isaac~ Let me stay in your room. I'm slim, so I won't take up too much room on the bed. 'Kay." He says in an almost sickening sweet voice.
"No. Not happening. I'll crush you, literally." The vampire boy replies.
"So cold!" The boy exclaims and the blue-blood sighs.
"You can either sleep on the lounge sofa here, or in the library." The black haired boy offers.
"Fine, I sleep all by my lonesome on the—Wait, did you say library?" The red boy began then asks.
"Just found it today actually. Pretty cool, it was hidden behind the wallpaper." Grim tells him.
"I'll get a blanket." Isaac says and goes to grab one, then gives it to Ace. "Night, Ace. Don't let the ghosts bother you." He says as he and Grim head upstairs.
"Sure. I'll do—Wait, what?" The red boy replies. The vampire and familiar ignore him as they head upstairs, back to their.
"Man, what a night. I don't know if I'll even get back to sleep." Grim yawns, and promptly falls asleep, making Isaac laugh. The boy then picks up the books he had gotten from the library. His rushing earlier had knocked them onto the floor. He notices the Lewis Carol, Wonderland book and picks it up. The book landed open on the floor, and he looks at the page it was open to.
"The "trial of the Knave of Hearts, for eating the Queen's tart"." He read in his mind. "That's right, in the book, the Queen of Hearts called for a trial when the Knave stole and ate her tart. Just like Ace." He remembered. "Now that I think about it, Ace also has a heart on his face. What's that all about?" He wonders, then goes to sleep. He just knew tomorrow was going to be a long day.
Isaac awoke the next day to another series of pounding at the door. He groaned. Again? Seriously? He yawns as he gets up and heads to the front door. He walks down the stairs to the foyer to see Ace, along with Deuce.
"I heard what happened from the other residents. You got collared after you stole the dorm leader's tart... You are a complete idiot." The spade boy says. Really?
"Oh, shut up! I don't wanna hear that from you of all people! ...By the way, is he still mad?" The red boy retorts, then asks.
"Not really. He looked a little irritated at some guys you were late for morning roll call, but... Three people met the same fate as you." Deuce replies. Oh boy...
"He hasn't calmed down at all! He's defiantly pissed!"
"Good lord." Isaac sighs and begins walking down the stairs. "Do you idiots know what time it is?" he asks as he walks up to them.
"Sorry, but class will be starting soon. We need to get going." Deuce informs and Isaac sighs again.
"Alright, you two wait here. I'll go wake up Grim and get dressed." He says.
"Ah, perfect timing. You know, I ran into the headmaster earlier and he told me to give you this." Ezra says as he appears with a bundle of clothes in hand.
"Whoa!" Ace and Deuce exclaim.
"Oh, Ezra. Uh, thank you." Isaac says as he takes the clothes.
"Dude! What is that?! There's ghosts here?!" Ace exclaims.
"Ezra's one of the ghosts who lives here, along with Gus and Phineas. They're mostly harmless just pranksters." The black haired boy replied.
"Yes, but we know better than to prank a Blue Blood Vampire." Ezra says and they all snap their attention to him. "We figured when we saw you heal so fast from that wound you had last night, especially considering you have no magic. Laters!" He says and disappears.
"Okay, with that said, I'll go get cleaned up." The vampire says. "And speaking of clean, as payment for sleeping here, Ace, you will be helping me and Grim with cleaning and fixing up the Phantom Dorm." He says to the red head.
"What?! You can't be serious!" The boy in question exclaims.
"Yes, especially after you woke us up at 4 in the morning, and I'm not gonna let you just freeload off of us because you got yourself into trouble. Again." Isaac replies and heads upstairs.
"He's got a point." Says Deuce.
"Oh, shut up!" Ace retorts.
After waking up Grim, then getting ready, with brushing his teeth, washing his face, combing his hair, getting dressed, and all that other stuff, the four set out to head to the main school building. They arrive at the main street, the statues of the Great Seven, including the now clean Queen of Hearts, stood there.
(AN: This is what Isaac's uniform looks like, just imagine him instead)
"Hey, hey. Outta my way! The Great Grim and his companion are making their way as students of Night Raven Collage! Just look at my collar. Unlike that lame thing around your, mine is very stylish. On top of that, you can't use magic right? You'd make a really good janitor. Nyaha!" Grim taunts Ace. Isaac sighs.
"Grr! I'll remember this for when I get my magic back!" The red boy swears.
"Honestly, it's more like karma than anything. If I remember correctly, you were the same way to us." The black haired boy states.
"Dude! Come on!" The other boy wailed.
"He has a point, and the headmaster just told us yesterday not to make another scene..." Deuce agrees then reminds. "Nevertheless, you're gonna have problems in class with magic sealed like that. Have you thought about apologizing to Dorm Leader Rosehearts and having him remove it?" He questions.
"Crap. This won't go well at all!" Ace groans.
"We've still got time before class and I'm curious about the other dorms. Let's go watch Ace's apology." Grim suggests.
"This isn't a show! Screw this!" Ace says. Despite that, they make their way to the Hall of Mirrors behind the East Building. When they arrive, they go through one of the mirrors, with card like frame design, and arrive at Heartslabyul Dormitory.
"Woah! This is gorgeous! It couldn't be any more different from ours!" Grim exclaims. The place did have
"Can't really deny that." Isaac admits. "Hopefully, with Ace's help we can at least make the place more livable." He says then casts a look to said boy. "And if you try to flake out on us, I will hunt you down and bite you." He warns.
"You wouldn't. Wait, would you?" Ace denies then asks nervously.
"You really wanna test that theory?" Isaac says in a deep tone and Ace shudders. The four then make their way to the garden.
"Crap, crap. I've got to get these roses painted." They hear and look too see a Heartslabyul student who looked like, he was, painting roses? Wait a minute...
"Oh, somebody is here." Grim says as they approach the guy.
"Oh, watch out. Any paint splatters and my head is gone." He says. The guy in question had medium length orange hair, with a piece of it tied back in a ponytail, yellow-green eyes, and a red diamond mark under his right eye.
"No way... This maze, and the rose painting, it's just like from the story. And my dream last night." Isaac thought.
"Hm? Do you all need something?" The boy asked.
"Uh, what are you doing with all that?" Ace asks himself.
"This? As you can see, I'm painting the roses red." The boy replies.
"Huh? Why would you paint the roses?" Deuce asks confused.
"Hmm, your fresh reaction is so cute!" The, seemly older, boy coos. Huh? "Now that I take a good look at you, you're the freshmen that busted the 10,000,000 madol chandelier yesterday." He says.
"Oh man... We're gonna hear about the chandelier until the day we graduate..." Ace sighs. That's for sure. If anything, it made Isaac realize he needed to learn about this world's currency.
"And you're the one who went and added on more punishment by stealing the dorm leader's tart last night!" The older boy said next with a laugh. "I feel so lucky getting to meet the notorious newcomers first thing in the morning." He teases.
"Hey, hey, hey, let's take a selfie! Yay!" He says and takes out a smartphone, and takes a picture of all of them. "Can I put this on Magicam? Tell me your names so I can put you in the tags." He says. Oh great, one of those guys now.
"I'm Deuce Spade." Deuce answers him.
"Ace." Ace replies.
"I'm Isaac North, and this is my friend, Grim." Isaac gives him his and Grim's name.
"Alright, upload finished!" The boy announced. "Oh right! I'm your senior, third year, Cater Diamond. Call me, Cater. Cay in fine, too." He introduces himself.
"Nice to meet you." Isaac says back. "Guy sure is carefree." He added in thought.
"Ah right, you're the supervisor/prefect/dorm leader of the Ramshackle Dorm I've heard about. Good on you, being able to live in a place like that! It's super dark and you can't get a good Magicam in there. You have my sympathy." He says. It sounded like a taunt.
"Actually, it's called the Phantom Dorm." Isaac corrects.
"This guy's really running his mouth." Grim mutters to him. Yeah, he agrees.
"Oh, my bad." He apologize, but it didn't sound sincere. "Ah! I don't have any time for small talk! The party is in two days. I don't wanna lose my head for being late." He suddenly exclaims, panicked. "Hey, can you guys help me with painting the roses?" He then asked.
"Why are you even doing something so weird anyway?" Ace asks. Good question.
"Red roses at a party are the most photogenic! I guess? I also have to change the flamingos' colors for the croquet match... So I'm busy with a lot of work." Cater replies. Huh?
"You're changing the flamingos' colors? Your chores are so weird." Grim says.
"So the tart that Ace ate, was going to be used for the dorm leader's birthday party then. That's why he was so mad..." Deuce deduces.
"Nope? That's not it." Cater rebuffs. What?
"It's not?! Then who's birthday is it?" Ace said confused then asked.
"It's not anyone's birthday. The day after tomorrow is our dorm's traditional "Unbirthday Party". The dorm leader chooses a random day that isn't anyone's birthday and we have tea party." Cater answers and explains.
"An Unbirthday Party... tea party... Hang on... That's right out of Alice's book. This whole dorm seems to be like wonderland come to life." Isaac thought.
"The heck is that?!" Ace asked, snapping him back to reality.
"Later, worry about the reason later! All you have to now is make the roses red!" Cater replies while laughing. "Deuce, Grim, you two can do it with magic. Ace, Isaac, since you can't use magic, here's some paint and a brush." He instructs to them, while handing paint buckets and brushed to Ace and Isaac.
"Wait, we can change the color with magic...?" Deuce says surprised.
"I've never done anything like that." Grim admits.
"Okay, it's fine, just relax! We'll figure it out! We better hurry though if we don't want to lose out heads to the dorm leader~" Cater says in sickening sweet tone, that made even Isaac shudder.
With that, they got to painting. While Cater, Deuce and Grim used their magic to change the colors, Ace and Isaac were using paint and a brush to paint them. As they were painting, Ace noticed that Isaac suddenly had a far off look and didn't seem to be focusing at all.
"Dude, are you okay?" He asks, snapping the other boy out of his stupor.
"Huh?" The black haired boy asks.
"You alright? You looked spaced out for a sec there." The red boy says.
"Oh, it's nothing. I was just thinking." Isaac replies and they go back to painting, but Isaac's mind was still preoccupied. "This whole place really does look like the rose garden from Alice in Wonderland. It's almost an exact replica, down to the weirdly shaped rose bushes, like card suits." He thought.
"Red, red... There! Gah! It turned blue!" He hears Deuce exclaim and turns to see that the spade boy had turned the roses blue instead of red.
"Change color... Take that! Gyah! The roses are on fire!" At Grim's exclamation, he turns to see a rose bush on fire, with blue flames. Acting quickly, Isaac puts down the bucket and brush, grabs a watering can and douses the fire, putting it out.
"Wow, you guys are really more terrible at this than I could've imagined." Cater teases, though he also had a nervous tone.
"I still don't get it. Aren't the roses fine being white? They're still pretty." Ace questions. Isaac was inclined to agree.
"This is our tradition. Roses have to be red for the Unbirthday Party. And we use flamingos in seven different colors for croquet with hedgehogs as the balls." Cater explains. That got Isaac thinking again.
"It really is like Wonderland. With the roses, flamingos and hedgehogs. In the story, the Queen hated white roses, so the card painted them red. Though, in the original book it also had another meaning. No! Not thinking of that! Flamingos!
"They were colored differently and used as mallets with the hedgehogs balls. Not to mention the strange and strict rules. The Headmaster said this place is called Twisted Wonderland, yet Heartslabyul here looks like the world itself. It's almost scary in a way." He thought.
"But, you know, the spring garden concert of the flowers uses white roses. That's an important point, too." The diamond boy added, snapping Isaac back to reality.
"Those are all pretty strange rules!" Grim comments. Isaac had to agree.
"They say these rules were all decided by the Queens of Hearts from the Great Seven herself. Riddle is particularly passionate about following the rules, even compared to other strict dorm leaders." Cater explains.
"Makes sense. Though half of those rules were the Queen being a tyrant. Not to mention she had the temper of a toddler. Woman lost her shit over anything she didn't agree with. Sure, it was kind of funny, but it's not like I would ever want to be on the receiving end of her wrath." The black haired boy thought and shivers.
"I won't deny he goes a little too far sometimes, though..." Cater admits.
"That's right. I don't have time for this. I want to speak to the dorm leader, is he inside?" Ace says then asks. Oh right, he'd forgotten their reason for coming here.
"Hm? I think there's still time before he leaves..." Cater replies. "By the way, Ace the tart thief, did you bring a tart of apology?" He then asks. Huh?
"What? No, I came here first thing so I'm empty handed..." Ace answers.
"Oh no. Is that so?" The older boy sighed. "Since you're going against Laws of the Queen of Hearts, Number 53: "One must always must always return what they stole", I can't let you into the dorm." He says. Okay, that rule was actually fair.
"Huh? The hell is that?!" Ace exclaims.
"I'll lose my head too if I knowingly let you in while you're not obeying the rules. Hehe, I feel bad, but you need to leave before Riddle notices." He tells them.
"Woah, his face got serious! Guys, help me out!" The red boy calls.
"Why would I?" Deuce questioned.
"Please! I can't use magic right now... Ah! Here he comes!" Ace pleads then exclaims when Cater approaches.
"Guys! No fighting! We've gotten in enough trouble already. Besides, we gotta get going anyway, I'm pretty classes are about to begin." Isaac interrupts then states.
"Dammit, he's right." Ace groans.
"Yeah, we should get going." Deuce agrees.
"We'll make sure to be back with a tart next time." The vampire boy tells Cater.
"I hope so. Make sure you do." The boy says and they leave. Arriving back at the dorm entrance.
"Dammit! Getting turned away without a tart. We didn't have anything to begin with. He just wanted us to paint the damn roses!" Ace complains.
"He's a shrewd one." Grim agrees.
"Then we just have to bring a tart and try again. We can go after..." Deuce says.
"Later guys, we gotta go. School's starting." Isaac states.
"Oh crap! He's right! The warning bell already rang! We're gonna be late!" The spade boy panics.
"Ah! My shining school life is going to be tarnished on day one! Let's get a move on!" Grim exclaims.
"What class are you two in? You're first years, right?" Ace asks.
"The headmaster told us Class 1-A." Isaac answers.
"Wow, we're the same class as you guys. First period is Potions." Deuce says.
"Woah! Sounds like fun!" Grim cheered.
"I can't use magic so I wonder how this'll go..." Ace wonders.
"Guys, if we don't hurry we'll probably get in trouble." Isaac urges.
"Crap! Let's go!" Deuce says and they rush to class.