2025-08-02 02:47:43The gates of Ivory Crest University towered like the iron jaws of a fortress. For most students, it was the beginning of a dream. For Eli Kingston, it was a punishment dressed in privilege.
The black Lexus car came to a stop just at the campus entrance. Its windows were tinted enough to block out the world, not that Eli needed shielding. He didn’t care who saw him. The silence in the car lasted for forty minutes. Not awkward. Just… deliberate. His father stared straight ahead from the passenger seat, hands folded in his lap like a politician waiting for a photo shoot. “You don’t talk much anymore,” Eli said flatly, not bothering to look at him, his father exhaled, lips pressed into a line. “There’s nothing left to say. You’re here. Make it count.” “Touching.” The door clicked open. The chauffeur Marcus, a man who had known Eli since he was six gave him a small nod and opened the trunk. Eli stepped out into the crisp September air. Overhead, clouds clung to the sky like ash. The campus stretched before him: cobbled walkways, Victorian buildings crawling with ivy, and lampposts that looked like they’d whisper secrets if you leaned close enough. Every brick of Ivory Crest screamed money and legacy, the kind of place where names mattered more than merit. He adjusted the collar of his black coat and grabbed the single leather suitcase Marcus placed beside him. “I don’t want to get a call about you,” his father said from the open window. Eli turned, smirked. “Then don’t answer your phone.” The car peeled away. He stood alone now, surrounded by other freshmen and returning students, their parents hugging them, handing them tote bags and warnings. Eli’s presence made a ripple. Whispers trailed him like perfume. “Is that…?” “Eli Kingston? No way.” “He got into Crest?” “Figures. Money talks.” He’d expected that, anticipated it even, "let them talk, let them guess" he said. He moved through the crowd with the practiced indifference of someone who didn’t need to impress anyone. His gait was confident, sharp, laced with something bordering on danger. His dark eyes scanned the sprawl of students, but no one caught his interest. Not yet. Campus signs pointed toward the freshman dorms, sleek redbrick buildings with names like Lancaster, Abernathy, and Kingston Hall. The last one made his stomach twist. He hadn’t asked for a building to bear his family’s name. He hadn’t asked to be enrolled here either. His father had pulled strings, cleaned up messes, made sure the Kingston heir didn’t completely fall off the map after last spring’s scandal. One suspension. One ruined press appearance. One very public punch thrown at a senator’s son. And now… here he was. As he approached the residential quad, Eli caught sight of his dorm. He was assigned to Lancaster Hall, third floor, room 317. He took the stairs two at a time, passing students dragging lamps, boxes, and guitars. He carried nothing but his suitcase. No posters. No photos. The hallway smelled like fresh paint and ambition. His room was already open. One side of it was cluttered with signs of life, clothes on the bed, a gaming console plugged in, a poster of a band he didn’t recognize tacked up. His new roommate was already here. “Yo!” The guy popped his head out from behind the closet door. Tall, lean, Black, with a wild afro and a wide grin. “You must be Kingston. Damn. You don’t even knock?” “I live here too.” Eli set his bag down. The guy extended a hand. “Name’s Zayn. Zayn Carter. Roomies.” Eli gave a slow once over, then a half-shake. “Cool.” Zayn laughed. “You’ve got serious 'trust fund menace' energy. Let me guess — East Coast, private school, kicked out at least once?” Eli arched a brow. “Twice.” Zayn whistled. “Damn. At least you’re honest.” Eli shrugged off his coat and hung it with care. “Only when it entertains me.” Zayn watched him, curious but not intimidated. That was rare. “You know anyone here?” Zayn asked. Eli tossed his phone on the desk. “Not really. But they know me.” Zayn laughed again. “Cocky.” “No. Just… observant.” Outside their window, a bell chimed. Students were gathering around the quad for the traditional Welcome Ceremony. Eli had no intention of joining them, not until he saw the envelope. It was sticking halfway out of his mailbox in the Lancaster Hall lobby. White, unmarked, crisp. The kind that didn’t come from Admissions or family. Just one word on the front, typed neatly in black ink: Kingston. He hesitated. Then, with practiced calm, he slipped it out and tore it open. Inside, a single sheet. Two lines. “You don’t belong here. Your family’s sins are already bleeding through.” Eli’s pulse didn’t quicken. His expression didn’t change. But inside, something clenched. He looked around the empty lobby. No one. Just muffled voices drifting from the quad and the distant echo of laughter. Still, he scanned the shadows. Nothing. He refolded the note, slid it into his coat pocket, and walked back upstairs — slower this time, thoughtful. Someone was playing a game. And if they wanted a reaction, they’d have to try harder. But deep down, Eli knew: this was just the beginning.
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Chapter 161
The light tore through the chamber like a living thing, spilling upward in great coils that twisted into the shape of the Eye. Eli’s skin burned where the fragments of the cubes still clung to him, glowing faintly as if they refused to let go. The air was no longer air—it was heat and vibration, a storm of sound and pressure that made his bones feel hollow. Lena clutched him tighter, her arms anchoring him even as the ground beneath them split wider, stones shearing off into the abyss below.The Watchers writhed where they knelt, their masks cracking and shattering. From beneath the porcelain shards came not faces but shadow, their forms unraveling into streams of black smoke that the Eye drank hungrily. Their chanting devolved into screams that echoed into the fissure. The broken mask, the last one standing, staggered toward Eli with movements that were almost human and yet all wrong—his limbs jerking too fast, his spine arched unnaturally. His voice came distorted, layered with a hu
Chapter 160
The hall groaned under the weight of centuries, every stone shuddering as if the very foundation of Crest was remembering its own buried sins. Dust fell like ash from the vaulted ceiling. Eli stood in the center, the two cubes heavy in his hands, their carved spirals twisting in ways his eyes couldn’t quite follow. Every breath he took came ragged, uneven, like he was pulling not air but something darker, heavier, into his lungs. The whispers were relentless now, no longer murmurs at the edge of hearing but a tide of voices clamoring inside his skull, pressing against his thoughts until his own mind felt like it might splinter.“Eli,” Lena hissed. Her face was pale, her eyes bright with fear, her hands trembling though she fought to keep them steady on his arm. “Don’t listen to it. Put them down. We’ll find another way.”Her voice cut through, thin but real, a thread in the storm. Eli wanted to answer her, wanted to ground himself in her presence the way he always had, but the cubes p
Chapter 159
The Crest had gone quiet after the Watcher’s defeat, but it was not a silence of peace. It was the kind of hush that settles before a storm breaks, when the air grows heavy and every breath feels borrowed. Eli could not shake the weight of what had happened in the refectory. The look on the students’ faces haunted him, their awe cut through with fear. They hadn’t just seen him resist a monster—they had seen him command it, even if only for a moment. That truth was spreading faster than fire through dry grass.He tried to convince himself that it didn’t matter, that the whispers were just noise, but he could feel the shift everywhere he went. Doors stayed open for him a second longer. Conversations cut off as he walked by. Students who had once mocked him with sneers and behind-the-back laughter now stepped aside, eyes lowered, as though unsure if he was a savior or the next curse. And somewhere inside, that attention stirred something dangerous, something old and cold, like a crown lo
Chapter 158
The Crest no longer pretended to be a school. By the next evening, the façade of classrooms and lecture halls was a hollow mask over something older and rawer. Eli felt it in the air as soon as he stepped from his dormitory—every breath was heavy, tinged with smoke though no fire burned. The corridors stretched further than they should have, ceilings groaned, and portraits whispered behind their gilt frames. Students huddled in corners with wide, restless eyes, whispering rumors about the tolling bell and the ground that had shifted beneath their feet. Professors, once so composed, moved like hollow men, clutching books to their chests, their voices cracking when they tried to enforce order. The Crest was unraveling, and everyone inside could feel it.Eli walked with Lena and Callum, the three of them moving like a unit though every step was shadowed with unspoken tension. The cube weighed in his pocket like a stone, inert since the Eye’s hall collapsed, but it wasn’t dead. He felt it
Chapter 157
The Crest had always loomed like a monument—timeless, impervious, a citadel that stood outside the rules of ordinary decay. But on that night, as the bell’s unnatural tolling faded into silence, Eli felt it breathe. The stone itself shifted, walls groaning as if the foundations were no longer sure of themselves. The corridors no longer obeyed their maps. Arches sagged, staircases bent where they had once stood straight, and new shadows moved where there should have been none. The Crest was alive, and its pulse matched the rhythm hammering in Eli’s chest. He ran down the corridor, Lena at his side, Callum a step behind. Their footsteps echoed too loudly, as though the stone was eager to swallow their sounds. Every hallway they turned down bent into shapes Eli swore hadn’t existed yesterday. Murals bled onto the walls—figures painted centuries ago now moving as if freed from their confinement. Eyes followed them, whole frescoes leaning forward as if hungry for the trespassers running be
Chapter 156
The night stretched on like it would never end. Eli didn’t know how long they had been walking through the shifting halls of the Crest, but time had slipped away from him in the way it did inside dreams, measured not by minutes but by how heavy the silence grew, by how tightly his chest clenched. Every corridor looked the same now, and yet different—walls bending in angles that defied logic, arches that curved downward like jaws ready to snap shut.They had left the library behind, but the weight of that great Eye on the wall still lingered. Eli could feel its stare in the back of his skull, like a nail pressed into bone. Each time he blinked, he half expected to see the spiral when he opened his eyes again.“We can’t keep wandering like this,” Lena whispered, breaking the silence. Her voice echoed in strange ways, bouncing down the hall ahead of them before coming back warped, like someone else was speaking with her mouth. “The Crest isn’t letting us go. It’s folding us back inside i
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