2025-08-04 22:58:03Eli 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.
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Chapter 185
Crestmoor was still again.No thunder, no whispers, no tremor in the stone. Just the gentle hum of morning rain easing across the roofs, washing the night from the world. The storm had passed — and with it, the ghosts.Julian stood at the edge of the courtyard, watching the water pool around the cobblestones. The clock tower loomed above, its hands restored, ticking steadily for the first time in years. He hadn’t heard a sound more comforting — or more cruel.The dawn light broke through the thinning fog, spilling over the cracked spire where everything had ended. They’d found Lena there, unconscious beside the shattered pedestal, the ledger closed beneath her hand. No sign of Eli. No trace of the Eye.The university called it a lightning strike — freak weather, a miracle that no one else had died. The old professors whispered about renovation funds and electrical malfunctions, while the students swapped half-true stories of what they saw that night: golden light, the bells tolling, a
Chapter 184
The storm hit Crestmoor like a living thing.Rain slashed across the spires, thunder rolled through the courtyard, and the clock tower loomed above it all — its massive face frozen between the hours, pendulum still, as though time itself had been stunned into silence.Lena and Julian reached the base of the observatory stairs, drenched and shaking. The door, once locked tight, now hung open. A cold draft breathed out from within, carrying a sound that wasn’t quite wind — a deep, rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat buried in stone.Julian glanced at his watch. 11:42.“Eighteen minutes,” he said, voice rough. “We finish this before the clock resets.”Lena didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the spiral stairs twisting upward into the shadows. Every step pulsed faintly beneath their feet, light seeping through the cracks like veins of molten gold.They climbed in silence. The air thickened as they rose — not just heavy with moisture, but with something else, something alive. The walls trem
Chapter 183
By evening, the air around Crestmoor had changed.The fog that usually hugged the campus had thickened into something else — not mist, but memory. You could see the echoes in it: flickers of the past caught between breaths. Students rushing through the courtyard who weren’t really there. Bells ringing from towers that hadn’t sounded in years.And over it all, the ticking.Steady. Ruthless.Eight hours left.Julian sprinted through the quad, clutching the brittle Watchers’ journal against his chest. The wind tore at the pages, whispering in a dozen voices at once. Every light in the observatory had gone out the moment he’d found the final entry. Now, even the sky looked wrong — too dark for dusk, like night had arrived early to watch.He needed to find Lena.He burst through the chapel doors, breath ragged. The sight stopped him cold.Lena stood at the altar, surrounded by floating specks of gold — dust suspended in the air, each one pulsing faintly with light. The mural behind her had
Chapter 182
The clock hadn’t stopped ticking since the night before.It echoed through every hall, every corridor of Crestmoor, a sound that should’ve been ordinary — but wasn’t. Each tick felt heavier, deliberate, as though it were marking not time, but lives.10 hours. That’s what the countdown said.Ten hours until midnight.Lena stood in the library foyer, staring up at the great clock mounted above the archway. The hands glowed faintly in the dim morning light, the metal warped and strange. Every so often, she swore she could see faint letters reflected on the glass face — words she couldn’t quite read.Julian burst in, breathless, his coat dripping from the fog outside. “It’s not just the library,” he said. “The other clocks are moving too. The one in the observatory, the one in the main hall — they’re all synced.”Lena turned toward him, pale. “Counting down to what?”He didn’t answer right away. “I think… the collapse. Whatever barrier Eli built, it’s failing.”The word collapse hung betw
Chapter 181
By morning, Crestmoor felt wrong.The rain had stopped, but the clouds hung so low they almost scraped the rooftops, and the courtyard was eerily empty. No laughter. No movement. Just that sense — heavy and unshakable — that something vast and unseen had shifted during the night.Lena hadn’t slept. She sat in the library’s side room, the ledger open on the table before her. The words The Keeper’s Return still glowed faintly on the cover, the light pulsing like a heartbeat. She’d tried to close it. She’d even tried to hide it. But every time she turned away, she could feel it watching her.Julian arrived just after dawn, soaked and pale. “The chapel bells rang again at four a.m.,” he said quietly, shutting the door behind him. “No one pulled the rope. I checked.”Lena rubbed her temples. “They’re not just bells anymore. They’re signals. Warnings.”“Of what?”She looked up at him, exhaustion shadowing her eyes. “Of the Eye waking.”Julian exhaled, pacing. “Lena, you sound like—” He stop
Chapter 180
Lena ran.Her footsteps echoed up the spiral stairs, each one swallowed by the suffocating dark that chased her from below. The flashlight beam jerked wildly in her shaking hand, illuminating flashes of stone, carvings, and the narrow passage she’d descended minutes before.By the time she reached the library floor, her lungs were burning. She slammed the hatch shut and stumbled backward, clutching the ledger against her chest. The air in the library had changed — thicker now, humming faintly, like the aftershock of a bell’s final toll.She turned toward the windows.Rain lashed against the glass. But it wasn’t the storm that froze her in place — it was the clock.Crestmoor’s grand library clock, suspended high above the main aisle, was ticking backward. The hands moved in smooth, deliberate motion, counting down the hours in reverse.Lena whispered, “No, no, no…”Her fingers fumbled for her phone. She dialed before thinking, desperate for something human, something solid.“Julian,” s
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