The crypt shook.Dust sifted down from the stone ceiling, catching in the beams of Lena’s flashlight. Callum braced himself against the wall, jaw tight, while Lena stood over Eli’s body. He lay sprawled across the cracked tiles of the chapel floor, pale and rigid, his hand still glowing faintly with the serpent’s-eye sigil.“Eli.” Lena’s voice cracked. “Come on, wake up.”His chest rose and fell, but shallow, too shallow. His eyes moved frantically beneath his lids as though he were trapped in a nightmare.“He’s inside it,” Callum muttered. His own face looked ghostly in the half-light, lips pressed thin. “The Hall of Bells. He’s caught in the Rite.”Lena snapped toward him. “Then pull him out!”“You think I can?” Callum’s voice was sharper than usual, but it wasn’t cruel. It was almost desperate. “No one walks out once the bells choose. Not without help from the outside.”The ground shuddered again. One of the iron sconces snapped off the wall, clattering to the ground beside Eli’s a

The night did not return to normal.It should have. The Bell had fallen silent. The air had cleared. But as Eli staggered out of the Hall of Bells, his ears still rang with a ghostly vibration, like the echo of a scream trapped in glass.Lena walked at his side, her hoodie spattered with chalk dust and streaks of old candle wax. She kept glancing over her shoulder, as though the shattered Bell itself might come limping after them.Callum brought up the rear. He was pale, his usual smirk carved away into something harder. He hadn’t spoken once since the collapse, and the silence from him was almost worse than his sharpest jabs.They reached the courtyard.Everything was still. Too still.The storm that had soaked the Crest for days had vanished. No rain. No wind. Just a heavy, pressing silence, as though the campus had fallen under a dome of glass. The gothic arches loomed sharper than before, their shadows longer. Windows glowed faintly even in empty buildings, like eyes half-open in

The first body forced its way through the crack in the ceiling.Not human; not anymore.A student Eli recognized one of the upperclassmen from his philosophy class dropped onto the marble floor in a heap of gold-lit bones and twitching limbs. His eyes burned molten, his mouth slack as though pulled by invisible strings.He rose without sound, his head snapping toward Eli.And then he screamed.The sound was wrong, shrill, layered, like more than one voice squeezed through a single throat. It rattled the shelves. Books tumbled like falling bricks.“Back!” Callum shouted, grabbing a length of broken iron from the gate behind them. He swung, catching the thing across the jaw. Bone cracked. The student fell, but his body spasmed, limbs jerking like a marionette, and he began crawling toward them again.Lena pulled Eli behind a shelf. “There’s more coming!”She was right. The chanting surged, a wave breaking. Hands tore at the crack above, wood splintering, stone raining down. Shadows fell

The first blow shook the Vault like thunder.Dust rained from the ceiling. The iron gates at the far end quivered, glowing faint red where the mob’s torches slammed against it. Eli could hear their voices more clearly now — dozens, maybe hundreds — chanting in rhythm, a sick heartbeat of fury and devotion.> “Open the Eye. Open the Eye.”The words weren’t just shouted; they were woven. Each voice linked to the next, layered into a chant that made the air itself vibrate.Lena shoved her shoulder under Eli’s arm, dragging him upright. “We don’t have time to sit here and bleed, Kingston. Get on your feet.”He gritted his teeth, forcing his legs to obey. Every muscle screamed. His palm was shredded, still leaking onto the stone, but the cube’s remains no longer pulsed. The silence of it was almost worse than the chaos.Callum gripped the bar so tightly his knuckles were bone-white. His gaze stayed locked on the gate. “They’re not going to stop until it’s down. And when it goes, they won’t

The bell’s sixth toll rolled across the Crest like a wave breaking against stone.It wasn’t just sound. It was vibration. The kind that rattled glass, that set teeth on edge. Books in the library trembled on their shelves. Windows cracked spiderweb lines. The rain itself seemed to fall in slow, heavy drops, each one smearing light instead of reflecting it.Eli staggered, clutching the Lexicon to his chest. The sigil on his hand seared white, bleeding heat into his veins. He gasped, falling to one knee.Lena dropped beside him, grabbing his shoulders. “Eli! Talk to me. What’s happening?”His voice came strangled, barely audible through clenched teeth. “It’s not just a bell. It’s inside me.”Callum’s face was pale, eyes locked on the distant tower rising above the campus skyline. “The tolls are thinning the veil. Every strike tears it wider. And he—” He jerked his chin toward Eli. “He’s the conductor. It’s bleeding through him.”Eli’s laugh was bitter, twisted by pain. “Great. So I’m no