The air inside the house had changed.
It was subtle at first. A shift in the weight of the walls, the way the floor seemed to hold its breath beneath her feet. The warmth of the kitchen had faded, replaced by something colder, something ancient.
And Daniel—Daniel had changed, too.
One second, Daniel was seated across from her, watching, calculating. The next—the table flipped.
The mug shattered against the floor, shards skittering across the tiles as Daniel’s hand locked around Clara’s throat.
She had no time to react.
Her back slammed against the counter, the sharp edge digging into her spine. The air in her lungs collapsed, crushed beneath the weight of his grip.
Ivy.
She had to
Clara clawed at his wrists, her nails raking against his skin, but he didn’t flinch. His face hovered inches from hers, breath warm, steady. Too calm.
"You thought you were clever," he murmured, almost amused. "I almost believed you."
Almost.
Her vision blurred. Black spots crowded the edges of her sight.
Daniel’s grip tightened.
"Tell me, Clara," he whispered, his voice like silk, smooth and suffocating. "How long did you think you could play me?"
The pressure grew.
Her body jerked. A strangled, wet gasp tore from her throat, but there was no air left to breathe.
Ivy.
Daniel leaned in, his lips near her ear. "Did you think I wouldn’t notice?"
Her fingers flailed against the counter.
Her mind was screaming.
Find something. Anything.
"You really shouldn’t have come here," he murmured.
There.
Her fingers brushed cold metal—the knife.
Daniel’s grip tightened.
Clara’s body convulsed vision tunneling, airless. Her heartbeat thudded too slow, too weak.
Ivy.
Move.
With the last shred of strength left in her body, she swung.
The blade plunged into his side.
Daniel froze.
For a second just a second his breath hitched. His grip faltered.
Then the pain hit.
His mouth opened, a sharp **gasp**a sound she had never heard from him before.
Blood bloomed beneath his shirt.
Clara collapsed, sucking in air. Her lungs burned, her throat raw, but she didn’t stop.
She ripped the knife free.
Daniel staggered.
His eyes—wide, confused, disbelieving flicked downward, to the dark stain spreading across his ribs.
"You"
Clara didn’t let him finish.
She drove the blade in again.
And again.
And again.
The sound of metal tearing through flesh, the wet, sickening squelch of it it filled the room.
Blood sprayed.
It hit her face, warm and thick, running down her cheek, dripping onto her lips.
Daniel’s body convulsed beneath her, his hands twitching at his sides. His lips **curled**not in pain, not in shock, but in something that looked too much like a smile.
Clara panted, her breath ragged, her own heartbeat a hammer against her ribs.
And then
A sound.
A slow, wet laugh.
Daniel’s fingers twitched his body still moving.
Still alive.
Clara’s stomach lurched.
His mouth opened, blood bubbling at the corners.
His voice came low, broken.
"Too late."
Then
A creak.
Upstairs.
The guest room.
Ivy.
Clara’s breath caught.
And in that split second of hesitation Daniel’s bloody hand shot up, gripping her wrist.
His eyes black as the void.
Still alive.
And still hungry.
The knife was still in her hands.
It dripped, thick and hot, each crimson droplet splattering onto the floor with a slow, sickening rhythm. Clara could feel the blood on her skin, warm where it streaked her face, sticky where it clung beneath her nails.
Daniel twitched.
His body convulsed once a last, dying breath forced through his throat. His mouth sagged open, jaw slack, lips still curled into that unnatural grin. His head lolled to the side, his eyes **those black, bottomless eyes **staring into the void.
She waited.
One second. Two.
Nothing.
Daniel was dead.
The house knew it.
And it did not like it.
The air changed instantly, violently. The walls contracted, then exhaled. A shudder ran through the house’s foundation, rattling the cabinets, making the lights flicker wildly. The scent of blood, thick and metallic, bloomed into something rotting.
Something old.
Clara staggered back, her breath tearing through her throat in ragged gasps. The knife felt heavier in her grip, like the metal itself had absorbed something wrong.
And then
A noise.
Upstairs.
Not Ivy.
Something else.
It started soft. A slow, dragging creak of floorboards, as if something were shifting its weight something that had been still for too long.
Then a whisper.
Low, slithering. Not in a language Clara knew.
Not in a language meant for humans.
Her stomach clenched, her heartbeat a war drum in her ears.
Move.
She turned, bolting for the stairs, slipping in the blood that coated the floor. She caught herself against the wall, gasping, hands shaking as she forced her body upward.
Ivy.
She had to get to Ivy.
Now.
The whispering followed her. Crawling up the walls. Thick, wet syllables slipping between the cracks, beneath the floorboards, inside the air itself. The staircase felt longer than before, stretching into impossible darkness, each step groaning beneath her weight like an open mouth ready to swallow her whole.
The hallway loomed ahead, drenched in shadow.
And then she saw it.
The door to the guest room.
It was wide open.
No.
No, no, no.
"Ivy—!" Clara lunged forward, bursting into the room.
The bed was empty.
The blankets lay crumpled, twisted, like something had been there—but was no longer. The curtains billowed from an unseen breeze, though the window was shut. The air was thick, soured with something ancient and hungry.
Clara’s lungs collapsed around her scream.
And then—
A soft, trembling breath.
She whipped around.
Ivy.
Huddled in the corner, small hands clutching the fabric of her nightgown, her tiny body shaking. Her face wet with tears.
Clara collapsed beside her, gathering her into her arms.
"It’s okay, baby," she choked. "I’ve got you. I’ve got you."
Ivy’s little hands fisted into Clara’s shirt, trembling.
And then
The temperature plummeted.
The floorboards behind them groaned, slow and deep.
Clara’s arms locked around Ivy.
She knew.
She knew before she turned. Before she forced her head to move, before she let her gaze shift over her shoulder—
She wasn’t alone.
Something was there.
Standing in the doorway.
Not Daniel.
Something older.
Something that had been watching all along.
And this time
It wasn’t leaving.
Clara’s breath came sharp, broken. Ivy trembled in her arms, her tiny fingers digging into Clara’s skin, her sobs muffled against her chest.
But Clara wasn’t looking at Ivy anymore.
She was staring past her.
At the thing in the doorway.
The air had thickened, pressing in too close, too heavy. The walls pulsed with an unseen breath, a presence that had seeped from the cracks in the floorboards, from the splinters in the walls from the blood soaking the house.
The shape in the doorway stood unnaturally still.
It was tall. Too tall.
The flickering light above them couldn’t touch it—as if the shadows clung to it, feeding from it.
And then it moved.
Not stepped.
Not walked.
Shifted.
Like something detaching itself from the walls, peeling away from the dark it had been part of. Its limbs unfolded slowly, grotesquely, as if it were remembering how to use them.
Clara’s breath hitched. Its head turned toward her.
No face.
Just the suggestion of one.
A stretched impression where a mouth should be. A hollow where the eyes should sit.
It didn’t need eyes.
It had been watching all along.
A low, guttural sound slithered from its throat a wet, dragging exhale, too deep, too unnatural.
Clara felt it in her bones.
A sound that belonged to the dark itself.
Ivy whimpered, curling deeper into Clara’s embrace.
Clara’s grip tightened around her, her body wired with terror, but still she moved.
She took a step back. Then another.
The thing in the doorway followed.
It didn’t walk. It slid.
Its form bending, twisting growing.
The walls rattled. The floorboards groaned. The whole house seemed to breathe in sync with it.
Clara turned, her mind screaming, her arms locking around Ivy—and she ran.
The hallway stretched.
The stairs warped beneath her feet.
A pulse rippled through the air, pushing against her skin, pressing deep into her ribs, like hands reaching from the walls.
Behind her, the thing let out a low, hungry exhale.
She reached the stairs, stumbling, nearly falling. Ivy clutched at her, her little hands desperate, terrified.
Clara pushed forward, her heartbeat slamming against her ribs.
She had to get out.
She had to
The air turned suffocating.
A chill wrapped around Clara’s spine, sinking into her bones like fingers burrowing beneath her skin. The room seemed to tilt, the walls shrinking, warping, as if the house itself was closing in.
But none of it was as horrifying as what lay before her.
Daniel’s body was gone.
The blood was still there.thick, dark, pooling where he had fallen. But the corpse—**the thing that had been Daniel.**had vanished.
No.
No, no, no.
Her chest heaved, her grip on Ivy tightening as she stumbled back, twisting toward the front door. She could barely see through the red haze clouding her vision, could barely think through the terror shredding through her skull
But then
A sound.
A slow, wet movement.
From the hallway.
Behind her.
The air turned static, crackling with a presence that should not exist.
Then—
Footsteps.
Slow. Measured. Deliberate.
Clara's body went rigid.
She didn't want to turn.
She couldn't.
But something made her.
She turned.
And there he was.
Daniel.
Standing at the mouth of the hallway.
⁸
It let her leave.
The front door creaked as she pushed it open. Cold air flooded her lungs.
The woods beyond waited.
The Grave Among the Trees
The trees stood like specters in the dark, towering, ancient, watching.
They had seen many things.
Now, they would witness a burial.
The wind whispered through the branches, shifting the leaves above. The ground was soft from the rain earlier, damp beneath Clara’s knees.
The weight of Daniel’s body pressed against the earth, a lifeless thing, heavy and unmoving.
She dug.
Her fingers ached, her muscles screamed, but she kept going. The soil crumbled beneath her hands, damp clumps sticking to her skin. The hole wasn’t deep enough.
But it was all she had the strength for.
Clara wiped her brow, streaking it with blood and dirt. Her breath came sharp, ragged in the quiet.
The night birds hooted in the trees, their voices hollow, distant.
The air shifted.
She wasn’t alone.
Nothing moved.
Nothing revealed itself.
But Clara felt it.
A presence, just beyond the trees. Unseen. Watching. Sensing.
She didn’t stop.
She grabbed Daniel’s arms, heaved his body into the grave.
The sound was dull, final.
She buried him.
One handful of dirt. Then another. Until the earth swallowed him whole.
The trees whispered.
The wind sighed.
Clara stood, body aching, breath uneven.
It was done.
She turned back toward the house.
Clara stood in the center of it, surrounded by the aftermath the blood, the scent of iron thick in the air, the faint imprint of violence in the walls.
Daniel was gone.
Buried beneath the trees, swallowed by the earth. The night had witnessed it, and now, it held its breath.
But the house... the house still knew.
Clara had to leave.
She moved quickly, precisely. No wasted movements. No hesitation. A mother cleaning up after a mess that could never truly be erased.
The bucket sloshed as she scrubbed the floor, her fingers raw, the scent of bleach burning her nose. She wiped down the walls, the counters, the places where Daniel had fallen, where his body had twitched, where his life had bled out onto the wooden panels.
The stain wouldn’t fully come out.
No matter how hard she scrubbed, how much she scraped at the floorboards it was still there.
A memory soaked into the grain.
She stopped, panting, sweat clinging to her skin despite the cold air slithering through the open windows.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it was enough.
She peeled off her blood-streaked clothes, bundling them into a plastic bag, her breath coming short, her body screaming in exhaustion.
The bruises on her throat throbbed.
She ran a washcloth over her skin, wiping away the remnants of Daniel’s grip, the last of his touch, the pieces of him that still clung to her like an old nightmare.
Then she dressed fresh clothes, clean fabric, no traces of the war that had unfolded in this house.
The clock on the wall ticked louder than it should have.
3:57 AM.
She had to go.
Clara stepped out into the cold, locking the door behind her.
No one saw her.
The houses in the distance were dark, their windows blank and unseeing. The town slept on, unaware of what had just been buried beneath its trees.
She kept to the back streets, her feet moving fast, moving light.
By the time she reached her own house, the first hints of dawn had begun to unfurl across the sky.
She stepped inside, locking the door behind her, her hands tight around the key.
Ivy was still asleep.
Small. Peaceful.
Clara sank onto the floor, her body shaking, her breath ragged.
It was done.
Daniel was gone.
But the blood was still there.
And deep in the woods, beneath the shifting earth, something was listening.
The house felt hollow.
As if something had been ripped from it, but not entirely.
Clara sat on the floor, her back pressed against the front door, her breath coming in short, uneven gasps. Her hands ached, her muscles screamed, her throat burned.
But she was home.
And Ivy was safe.
For now.
She pressed her forehead to her knees, the exhaustion settling into her bones. The weight of the night *of the grave she had dug, of the blood she had washed away, of the monster she had buried was crushing.
It wasn’t just the fight. It was everything.
The months of watching Ivy shrink away.
The nights of waking up to her daughter’s silent screams.
The sick feeling in her stomach every time Daniel smiled—too warm, too easy, too rehearsed.
She had known.
She had always known.
She just hadn’t been able to face it.
Not until the camera.
Not until the footage.
Not until the truth had been shoved down her throat so violently that she couldn’t choke it back down anymore.
A cold wind whispered against the window.
Clara raised her head.
The sky beyond the glass was bruised with the last remains of night, but morning hadn’t come yet. The streets were still empty, still hushed, as if the town itself was waiting.
She forced herself to stand.
Her body protested. Her legs shook beneath her as she stepped forward, one slow, careful movement at a time.
Ivy.
She had to see Ivy.
She moved through the house, the wooden floor whispering beneath her bare feet. The kitchen was clean, sterile, as if it had never been touched. The scent of bleach still clung to the air, but beneath it—something else.
Something faint.
Something metallic.
Clara swallowed. She had cleaned. She had wiped the blood from the floor, from the walls, from her own skin.
But Daniel’s blood had sunk deeper.
Into the cracks.
Into the house.
She kept walking.
She reached Ivy’s room, her hand trembling as she pushed open the door.
The little girl was still asleep, curled beneath the blankets, small and still.
Clara let out a shaky breath.
She stepped closer, kneeling beside the bed, brushing Ivy’s soft curls away from her face.
She looked peaceful.
But Clara knew better.
Ivy hadn’t been at peace in months.
Clara traced a finger down Ivy’s cheek, swallowing back the lump rising in her throat. She had done this for her.
She had killed for her.
And she would do it again.
She pressed a kiss to Ivy’s forehead, whispering, "It’s over, baby."
The words felt hollow.
Because deep down, Clara knew
It wasn’t over.
Not yet.
Not ever.
How to Get Masters in Law (LL.M.) Scholarships for International Students — The Complete Guide
Thinking about doing an LL.M. overseas? It’s one of the best decisions you can make for your legal career — international exposure, specialised training, stronger networks, doors opening in global law, human rights, public policy, corporate law, and more. But let’s be honest: fees, settling in a new country, living expenses — it adds up fast.
The good news is, there are many generous scholarship programmes that can cover tuition and living expenses. This guide shows how to find those scholarships, how to apply smartly, and how to improve your chances as an international law student.
Why LL.M. Scholarships Are Game-Changing
An LL.M. usually lasts one year in the UK and much of Europe, though in the U.S. or other regions it could be longer. Costs at top law schools often run into tens of thousands of dollars just for tuition — then you add accommodation, books, travel, visas, health insurance… It’s a lot.
Getting a scholarship does more than ease financial pressure. It may allow you to:
- Pick a university based on its academic strengths, not just cost.
- Take unpaid or low-pay public interest work without being overwhelmed by debt.
- Access career networks and internships tied to the scholarship scheme.
- Focus fully on your studies rather than worrying constantly about earning side income.
Key Scholarships to Know
Chevening Scholarships (UK)
What it is: A fully funded programme by the UK government for international students to study one-year master’s degrees.
👉 Chevening Scholarships
What it covers: Tuition, living stipend, travel to/from UK, and other allowances.
Fulbright Foreign Student Program (USA)
What it is: A U.S. government programme that allows international students, young professionals, and artists to pursue graduate study or research in the U.S.
👉 Fulbright Foreign Student Program
What it covers: Tuition, travel, living costs, and health insurance (varies by country).
Other Useful Scholarships & Funding Bodies
- School-based or Law School Scholarships (check each law school’s financial aid page).
- External organisations & foundations (NGOs, legal trusts, human rights funds).
- Home-country scholarships from ministries, foundations, or bilateral agreements.
- Special named scholarships, e.g., the Frank Boas Scholarship for Graduate Study at Harvard Law School.
Helpful resources:
How to Prioritise Which Scholarships to Apply For
- Check eligibility — nationality, degree, work experience, language skills.
- Apply early for big international scholarships (Chevening, Fulbright, Erasmus Mundus).
- Don’t ignore smaller school-level scholarships; they’re often easier to win.
- Balance your list with both “reach” and “safe” scholarships.
What Funders Look For
- Purpose & impact: Why this LL.M. matters and how you’ll apply it.
- Leadership: Evidence of initiative, advocacy, or community work.
- Academic & professional quality: Strong grades, research, or legal work.
- Strong references: From professors or employers who know you well.
- Compelling essays: Tailored, specific, and honest — not generic.
Documents You’ll Need
- Transcripts and degree certificates.
- Law-focused CV or résumé.
- 2–3 recommendation letters.
- Scholarship essays / personal statement.
- Proof of English (IELTS/TOEFL).
- Passport, photo, possibly a research proposal.
Timeline
- 12–18 months before start: Research programmes, prepare for English tests, gather documents.
- 9–12 months before start: Apply for major international scholarships (Chevening, Fulbright, Erasmus).
- 6–9 months before start: Apply to universities and law schools.
- 3–6 months before start: Visa, housing, and pre-departure arrangements.
Bonus Tips
- Match your story to the scholarship’s mission.
- Give referees guidance and reminders.
- Get feedback on your essays before submission.
- Apply widely — mix big and smaller scholarships.
- Connect with alumni for insider tips.
Where to Start Now
- Chevening Scholarships
- Fulbright Program
- Erasmus+ / Erasmus Mundus
- DAAD (Germany)
- Campus France – Eiffel
Final Thoughts
Getting an LL.M. scholarship is competitive but achievable with planning, strong applications, and persistence. Start early, stay organised, and aim high — your future in international law could begin with one of these opportunities.