The world ended in darkness.Not the ordinary kind. Not the dark of night or of shadows falling across a wall. This was thicker, absolute, as though the air itself had been drained of light and breath. Eli’s vision vanished in an instant, and with it came the screaming of hundreds of voices rising into a single, ragged cry.The bells continued tolling above, distorted, each one shaking the marrow of his bones. The quad had become a pit of chaos: footsteps pounding, bodies colliding, curses and pleas tangled in the air. Hands shoved past him in blind panic. Someone fell near his feet with a sickening crack. He couldn’t see who.“Lena!” Eli shouted, his voice swallowed by the blackness. His chest constricted, every instinct screaming at him to run, but he didn’t know where. His father’s journal. The cube. The Watcher’s mask. Everything spun together, frantic, jagged.A hand clamped onto his arm. “Here!” Lena’s voice, hoarse, raw. He nearly collapsed with relief as her other hand found h

The silence after the bell should have been a relief. Instead, it was worse.The Crest had grown used to its tolls, those deep, bone-rattling chimes that carried through every courtyard, corridor, and dormitory whether one wanted them or not. They had become part of the air, part of the rhythm of the university, so constant that even dread had its own cadence.But when the last toll died away and the silence stretched, people noticed.Students emerging from the dining hall into the storm froze mid-step. Professors paused lectures in the middle of their sentences, chalk hanging over half-finished words. Even the lights in the science wing flickered once, as if the circuits themselves held their breath.Rain continued to fall, but it no longer masked anything. In that sudden stillness, the Crest felt awake in a way it hadn’t in years. Windows shivered with the wind. Doors creaked as if from unseen hands. Every shadow seemed sharper.In the south quad, two freshmen looked up at the bell

The campus had gone quiet in a way that wasn’t natural.Eli felt it the moment he stepped outside his dorm the next morning. The usual murmur of voices, footsteps rushing toward classes, the metallic hum of bikes rolling over the cobblestones—all of it had dulled, like sound itself was being swallowed. Students still moved through the quad, but their eyes slid past him as if he were made of smoke.He pulled his hood lower and kept walking. Lena trailed beside him, scanning every face like she expected someone to spring from the shadows. Her tension was infectious. The silence wasn’t empty—it was watchful.They crossed toward the library, where the rain-streaked windows reflected only their shapes. Eli caught himself searching for movement in the glass, for shadows that weren’t his own. His hand brushed against the pocket where the black cube still sat. Its weight was unnatural, heavier than its size, as though the air itself bent toward it.“You feel it too?” Lena asked under her brea

The chamber felt older than stone itself. Every wall sweated with damp, the ceiling disappearing into darkness high above where faint echoes returned distorted, like voices twisted out of shape. The torches lining the curved wall flickered low, each flame guttering as though it too feared the Council.Eli’s seat was at the end of the long, obsidian table. He hadn’t been asked to sit, he'd been forced into it, with a quiet pressure in the air that bent his legs before his pride could resist. Now he sat with his back straight, heart hammering, eyes fixed forward as a dozen cloaked figures studied him in silence.His father had once sat here. He could feel it in the chair, in the weight of the table. Marcus Holloway had sat here, too. And all of them had either been broken, or buried, or erased.The first voice to break the silence was a woman’s, soft and honeyed. Her hair shone like silver thread in the dim light, her face carved sharp as a blade. “He has his father’s eyes,” she said, l

The Crest had always thrived on rumor. Whispers were as much its lifeblood as the textbooks and lectures, coursing through its hidden corridors and echoing up through its spires. But in the days following Eli’s defiance of the Council, rumor turned into frenzy.The first shift was subtle. Students began clustering in smaller groups than usual, choosing corners instead of open spaces, their voices hushed even when no one else was around. Then came the looks—longer, sharper. Some avoided his gaze entirely, others sought it out deliberately, as if measuring themselves against him. By the end of the week, the Crest wasn’t one community anymore. It was fractured.Eli could feel it in the cafeteria, in the library, even in the walkways between classes. On one side, whispers of support: He stood against them. He didn’t take the Oath. He’s not like the rest of them. On the other, murmurs edged with fear: He’s marked. The Tolls are his fault. The Eye follows him.One morning, Lena slid a folde