2025-08-06 02:14:26The 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.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
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
You may also like
The Mafia Revenge
Rose Queen 4.4K viewsThe Mafia's Possession
Jenny Chocolate2.2K viewsThe Comeback of Alarick
Kabirat Aleem3.9K viewsDark Eater
RandomGuy14.9K viewsNobody will Survive
Mijaly1.6K viewsLOCKED SHADOWS
Nk169 viewsImitation of Life
A.L.E.858 viewsTHE ROOT OF DARKNESS
ANITA_grace3.4K views