Inside the Crest: The Fall of Eli Kingston

Chapter 4: Stones and Names

Eli stared at the third note until the letters began to blur.

You’re walking a path built by the dead.

Step carefully, Kingston.

This time, it’s your name on the stone.

It was more than a threat. It was a message in code or maybe in blood.

He sat at his desk, the glow of his laptop casting shadows across the room. Zayn was out for the night, probably flirting his way through one of the upperclassman parties. Eli didn’t care. He needed quiet. He needed focus.

He pulled the previous notes from his drawer and laid them side by side. The paper was the same: matte, heavy stock, expensive. The ink didn’t smudge. The font was too clean to be handwritten — printed from a high-end laser printer. Professional. Deliberate.

Whoever was sending them had resources. Patience. A twisted sense of poetry.

And access to Eli’s schedule.

The notes weren’t random. They had been left in precise places: his mailbox, the statue near the chapel, now his dorm room. No cameras had caught the drop-offs. No witnesses. No signatures.

Someone was watching him from the shadows.

He reread the last line again:

This time, it’s your name on the stone.

Was it metaphorical? Or was there an actual stone?

That question wouldn’t leave him alone.

By morning, he had a plan.

—

At noon, he found Lena Moore in the archives wing of the library.

She was reading a massive book titled Crest Obituaries: 1871–Present, her legs curled under her on a cushioned bench. Her fingers danced lightly over the pages, tracing names like she was searching for ghosts.

Eli walked up and dropped the latest note on the table.

She didn’t look surprised.

“What do you want?” she asked, not lifting her eyes.

“I think you already know.”

She closed the book slowly, marked the page with a ribbon. “They’re escalating.”

“You’ve seen this before?”

“Not exactly. But similar patterns. The notes, the timing, the tone — all of it fits.”

“Fits what?”

She hesitated, then stood up. “Come with me.”

They walked in silence through the west quad, past the bell tower and under a canopy of gold-turning trees. Lena led him off the main path, around the back of the old library annex, to a part of campus most students didn’t bother with.

Here, tucked between two crumbling garden walls, stood a stone memorial.

A circle of engraved names.

Dozens of them.

It looked like a war monument — weathered, mossy, forgotten.

“What is this?” Eli asked.

Lena crossed her arms. “The university calls it the Legacy Circle. It’s supposed to honor Crest students who died while enrolled. Accidents. Suicides. Illness.”

“But…?”

She turned to face him. “Most of them weren’t accidents. And a lot of them have no official death records. Some of these names don’t even show up in the university database anymore. It’s like they were wiped.”

Eli crouched, reading the names. There was something eerie about them — elegant fonts etched into fading stone, most from wealthy families, many from decades ago… and a few recent.

Too recent.

He stopped at one:

Marcus Holloway — 2021

He looked up. “Two years ago?”

Lena nodded. “He was a sophomore. Legacy kid. Smart. Quiet. Started asking questions about the Watchers.”

“The Watchers?”

“That’s what the old threads called them. They’re not a club. Not a secret society like everyone thinks. They’re something else. Older. Institutional. Embedded into Crest itself. They don’t recruit. They choose.”

Eli stood slowly. “You think they killed him?”

“I think they erased him. His dorm was cleared out within twenty-four hours. No memorial. No emails. Just… gone.”

Eli looked back at the names. There was a space at the end of the ring — a blank slab waiting to be carved.

The silence between them thickened.

He could feel it now — the pull of something ancient, stitched into the bricks of this place.

“This isn’t about me, is it?” Eli asked.

Lena gave him a long look. “It is now.”

—

That evening, Eli sat alone in the common room of Lancaster Hall, watching the fire crackle in the stone hearth. The flames cast gold light across the old floorboards and framed photos of smiling alumni. All dead-eyed. All legendary.

His mind was racing.

He pulled out his phone and opened the Subnet forum again.

The thread titled "The Watchers Are Still Here" had been updated. A new post had appeared twenty minutes ago.

No name. No profile picture. Just text:

> He’s found the stones.

He knows what comes next.

Eli’s blood ran cold.

Another message. Another watcher.

He typed quickly.

Who are you?

No reply.

Then, after a full minute:

> Ask your father what he did in 1996.

That’s where it starts.

Eli stared at the screen, breath caught in his throat.

1996.

He was barely a year old.

His fingers hovered over the keys.

What did he do?

No answer.

He refreshed the thread.

Nothing.

Then he checked the post again.

It had been deleted.

Like it had never existed.

Zayn found him in the room later, sitting at his desk with the screen still glowing.

“Jesus,” Zayn muttered. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Close,” Eli said without looking up.

“More notes?”

“No. Worse. I think… I think this has something to do with my family.”

Zayn’s expression shifted from amused to serious. “What do you mean?”

“Someone mentioned a year. Nineteen ninety-six. Said to ask my father what he did.”

Zayn whistled low. “That’s creepy and weirdly specific.”

“I don’t even know where to start.”

Zayn scratched the back of his neck. “Can I ask something? Do you think maybe… they’re not just watching you because of your name, but because of something your family covered up?”

Eli didn’t answer. But the thought had already rooted itself in his mind.

He stood abruptly. “I need to make a call.”

The phone rang three times before his father picked up.

“What is it, Eli?”

“I need to ask you something.”

“You sound like your mother. Get to the point.”

“What happened in 1996?”

Silence.

Then: “Where did you hear that?”

“Answer the question.”

His father exhaled slowly. “That’s none of your concern.”

“It is now.”

There was a pause longer this time. When his father spoke again, his voice was lower. “Don’t dig where you’re not invited. Ivory Crest is full of graves, and some of them don’t stay buried. If you want to make it through the year, Eli, forget what you heard.”

“I can’t.”

“Then you better learn how to bury your own secrets.”

The line went dead.

Eli stared at the screen.

The silence on the other end said more than words ever could.

And suddenly, the final line of that third note made perfect sense:

This time, it’s your name on the stone.