Inside the Crest: The Fall of Eli Kingston

Chapter 6: The Girl in the Red Room

The figure pointed at Eli with a gesture not of greeting, but of warning, of marking.

Eli didn’t move.

The air around them was cold, the figure stood still under the shadow of the bell tower, the same place where the second note had been left. Now he or she was back. Wearing grey. Watching.

Then, without a word, the figure turned and walked into the ivy-covered passage beside the chapel.

Eli hesitated.

His pulse thundered in his ears.

But he followed.

The path led through the chapel’s rear garden, past hedges carved like mazes and benches that hadn’t been touched in decades. At the far end stood an old maintenance shed.

The door was open.

Inside, the air was thick with mildew and age. Gardening tools lined the wall. Buckets and boxes cluttered the corners, and in the center, a hatch on the floor.

Open.

A faint red glow pulsed from below.

Eli took a breath and dropped into the darkness.

He landed in a tunnel — narrow, damp, lined with red bricks that looked ancient. The glow came from lanterns spaced evenly along the walls, casting shifting light on graffiti-scrawled bricks and faded carvings.

He walked forward.

The corridor twisted left, then right, until it opened into a room — small, circular, with a low ceiling and a single crimson bulb swinging overhead.

And she was waiting.

Leaning against the far wall.

Lena.

But this wasn’t the same Lena he knew from the library. She wasn’t in jeans and boots. She wore a long coat, deep maroon, almost black and her hair was pulled back tight.

She looked older here,sharper.

Like a different version of herself had been waiting all along.

Eli froze.

“You?” he said. “You led me here?”

Lena didn’t answer right away. She studied him. As if she wasn’t sure what kind of person had arrived.

Then, finally: “You weren’t supposed to come this far.”

“You’ve been feeding me clues. Playing both sides.”

“No,” she said, calmly. “I’ve been trying to protect you. But now… now it’s too late.”

Eli’s fists clenched. “You were at the archive. You knew about the notes. The Legacy Circle. You even knew my father was involved”

“I know a lot of things, Eli,” she said, cutting him off. “That’s the problem.”

The silence between them thickened.

Then Eli stepped forward. “Who are the Watchers?”

Lena looked at him like the question was a bomb.

“They’re not a group,” she said. “They’re not even an organization anymore. They’re a belief. A doctrine passed down through the oldest families at Crest. They call themselves custodians of memory. But that’s just a prettier word for erasure.”

“They killed Marcus.”

She nodded. “And dozens of others.”

“Why?”

“Because some things aren’t meant to be remembered.”

She stepped toward him now, eyes hard.

“You think this is about legacy. About your father. But it’s not. The Watchers aren’t watching you because you’re a Kingston, they’re watching you because you’re the last piece of something they tried to bury thirty years ago.”

“What happened in 1996?” he asked. “What really happened?”

Lena paused. Then whispered:

“They tried to summon something.”

Eli blinked. “Summon… what?”

“A presence. A force that predates Crest. It was a ritual. Your father was part of it. He saw too much or not enough. No one really knows. But the others… they disappeared. Some were removed. Some just lost their minds.”

“Why would they even try that?”

“Because Crest was built on lies. Power. Blood. And power always wants more.”

Eli’s voice dropped. “Why are you telling me this now?”

Lena’s eyes glistened in the red light. “Because they’re coming for you.”

Something shifted in the air.

The light flickered.

And from deeper within the tunnel, a sound — quiet at first, then growing louder.

Footsteps.

Dozens of them.

Boots on stone.

Eli turned to run.

Lena grabbed his wrist.

“You can’t go back the way you came. There’s another exit — but you have to promise me something.”

“What?”

“If you make it out, you burn everything.”

“What are you talking about?”

She shoved a flash drive into his hand. “Names. Locations. Ritual records. Everything they tried to erase. It’s all there.”

“Then why not leak it yourself?”

Her lips trembled slightly.

“Because I’m not getting out.”

A sudden explosion of light burst through the tunnel behind them. The red glow was washed away in cold white beams — flashlights.

Voices barked orders.

Eli turned, heart thundering.

“Run!” Lena shouted.

He ran.

The escape tunnel was barely wide enough for his shoulders, winding upward in a dizzying spiral. The air thinned. The walls pressed in. But the sounds behind him never faded — boots, static, voices calling his name like a curse.

He didn’t stop.

The drive clutched tight in his fist.

At the top of the shaft, he found another hatch. Pushed it open.

And emerged into the Crest greenhouse.

The contrast was jarring, he staggered to the edge of the path and collapsed onto the warm stone, gasping.

Safe.

For now.

That night, Eli didn’t return to his dorm.

He booked a room at an off-campus hotel under a fake name and locked the door behind him.

Then he opened the flash drive.

It was worse than he imagined.

Hundreds of files.

Scans of old letters from Crest founders referencing "rites of transference."

Photos of a sealed door beneath the chapel with Latin engravings — “Ex Umbra, Lux”.

Transcripts of interviews with former students — all vanished.

And at the very end, a video file.

Untitled. Dated April 14, 1996.

He clicked it.

The screen showed five figures in robes, standing around a stone altar deep underground. The camera was shaky. One of the figures turned slightly — and even through the pixelated footage, Eli recognized the face.

His father.

Younger, but unmistakable.

He was holding something.

A knife.

And on the stone…

A student, unconscious or dead lay with arms crossed, mouth sealed with black wax.

A voice from off camera whispered: “This is how we inherit. This is how we remember.”

The footage cut to black.

Eli sat frozen.

Then something strange happened.

The screen flickered — and a single line of text appeared, though the video had ended:

> You watched. Now we see.

The laptop shut down on its own.

Outside the window, across the street, a man in a grey coat stood beneath a flickering streetlamp.

He was holding something.

A matchbook.

He struck it.

Lit a flame.

And in its glow, Eli saw what was printed on the match cover.

The Chapel Below. Midnight. Come Alone.