The scream sliced through the night like a blade.
Not the kind from cheap horror movies. It was raw, sharp, terrified.
The kind that makes your heart sprint before your brain catches up.
It echoed across the garden, bounced off marble walls, and turned the Glass Atrium that sparkling temple of elite perfection into a crime scene in seconds.
One moment, violins were playing.
The next, heels were clattering on tile as panic spread like perfume.
The air reeked of panic and champagne.
Students poured out of the ballroom.... designer shoes sinking into mud, diamond earrings slipping loose, mascara bleeding like war paint. Phones were out. Cameras shaking. The emergency lights stuttered against the glass ceilings, flickering like dying stars.
Teachers yelled for order, but nobody cared.
For once, Queen's Crest the untouchable, the royal, the perfect was in chaos.
---
Amara Okonkwo pushed through the crowd, her heart punching her ribs. She followed the scream past the broken champagne flute, past the fallen mask, past a trail of rose petals leading into the maze.
Then she saw it.
A body.
A boy.
Not Adrian.
Chidi Agu.
The new kid. The basketball hopeful. The boy everyone ignored because he didn't have a famous last name.
Now he lay in the grass, eyes wide open, staring at the stars like they owed him answers.
His lips were blue. His suit was torn at the shoulder. There was a scratch down his neck fresh, angry, deliberate.
And in his right hand, curled tight like a final secret, was a red envelope.
The same kind Adrian had received.
Amara froze. Her throat felt like it was closing up. Her heels dug into the soil, heavy with rain and guilt she didn't understand.
Somewhere behind her, someone gasped.
Someone else started praying.
---
Toni Wuraola appeared next, her emerald gown ruined, hair wild from the wind. She looked less like the queen of the ball and more like a goddess mid-fall.
"What the hell happened?!" she shouted. Her voice cracked the night in half.
No one answered.
Mimi stood behind her, trembling.
Bisola covered her mouth with both hands, eyes glossy with tears.
But Amara didn't move. Her stare was locked on the envelope, her fingers twitching like she wanted to touch it but couldn't.
Toni followed her gaze.
Her blood ran cold.
Then she looked up and saw Adrian standing at the maze's entrance.
Perfectly still.
Perfectly calm.
Watching.
His expression didn't belong to someone seeing a dead body for the first time. It belonged to someone who'd expected it.
And that terrified Toni more than the corpse itself.
---
Sirens wailed five minutes later, tearing through the silence.
Blue and red lights splashed over the golden gates of Queen's Crest like paint on a ruined masterpiece.
The news vans hadn't arrived yet, but everyone knew they would. This was too big to bury. A dead boy at Nigeria's most prestigious school? In a political family's orbit? The tabloids would feast for weeks.
This wasn't gossip anymore.
This was blood.
And blood doesn't stay quiet.
---
The Headmistress who was tall, strict, draped in purple silk and authority arrived with a pack of security guards.
Her voice carried like thunder.
"All students inside, immediately! Nobody leaves their dorms, nobody makes a call, nobody breathes a word!"
When she said nobody, she meant it.
"Lock this place down," she ordered the teachers. "No cleaners, no maintenance. The garden stays sealed."
It was already too late. The secret had left the garden the moment that scream pierced the air.
---
By 11 p.m., the school was silent again or pretending to be.
In Dorm Block B, Amara sat on the floor of her room, still in her black gown. Her hair was undone, her eyes hollow.
There was dirt under her nails. Mud on her hem. And a thin red smear near the edge of her sleeve that didn't belong to her.
She couldn't stop shaking.
She hadn't screamed. She hadn't cried. She hadn't even spoken to Adrian when the police arrived.
But now, alone, she couldn't breathe.
Her phone buzzed.
One new message.
No name. No number.
"One down. How many more before you start confessing?"
Her breath caught. The message blurred.
Confessing to what?
She looked at her wall, papers and notes pinned everywhere. Adrian's background. His missing year. Toni's moves. The red envelope. The dead boy.
It wasn't random.
Someone was playing with them like pieces on a board.
And she couldn't tell if she was the hunter or the prey.
---
Across campus, Toni was pacing her private suite, the hem of her gown ripped, her hands trembling not from fear, but rage.
"Dead," she whispered. "At a school event. During my event."
Mimi sat quietly in the corner, hugging her knees. "Do you think it was him?"
"Adrian?" Toni scoffed. "Please. He's too smart for something this sloppy. You don't plant a body in a rose maze unless you want to get caught."
"Then who would—"
Toni stopped her mid-sentence, eyes narrowing.
"There's something we're missing," she murmured. "Something bigger than a boy or a party."
She walked to her mirror, wiped a streak of mascara, and stared at her reflection.
"I built my name to mean something," she whispered. "And I won't let anyone bury it under a scandal."
Her voice cracked once again before hardening again.
"Not Amara. Not Adrian. Not whoever's playing puppet master here."
---
Adrian, meanwhile, sat on the edge of his bed like a man who'd already done his grieving.
His dorm was too neat. No trophies, no pictures, no posters. Just a stack of papers, a half-open laptop, and silence.
He scrolled through a file on his screen, a restricted government archive. The kind of thing students shouldn't have access to.
It was his record.
The year that vanished.
The blank space Amara had been trying to uncover.
Suspension. Transfer. No location listed.
He hadn't disappeared. He'd been erased.
Protected. Hidden. Controlled.
And now, someone was dragging those ghosts back into the light.
Adrian closed the file and looked at his reflection in the dark window.
His jaw was tight.
His eyes were tired.
Whoever killed Chidi hadn't just sent a message. They'd declared war.
---
By midnight, the police had taped off the garden.
By two, they removed the body quietly, under orders, without spotlights or press.
And at three, while the entire campus slept under lockdown, the Headmistress's office light flickered on for just a second.
A guard swore he saw someone inside.
When he checked, the office was empty.
Except for one thing.
A red envelope, sitting dead-center on the Headmistress's desk.
In gold ink, the words bled across the front:
"He was only the beginning.
You're all wearing masks.
Some of you… will be buried in them."
---
By dawn, the story broke.
Screens lit up across Nigeria.
Every gossip page, every morning broadcast, every social feed was ablaze.
"Tragedy at Nigeria's Most Exclusive Academy."
"Vice President's Son Caught in Queen's Crest Scandal."
"Murder at the School of Elites."
The country didn't care about the truth, it cared about the spectacle.
And inside the gates of Queen's Crest, that spectacle had names.
Toni.
Amara.
Adrian.
The Holy Trinity of whispers and wealth.
---
In the cafeteria, girls huddled around their phones, whispering like ghosts.
"Did you see the video?"
"They said his eyes were open."
"They said his hand was pointing at something."
One girl leaned in, voice trembling. "They said he was holding a note."
Another girl swallowed. "What did it say?"
The first girl glanced around before whispering:
"They say it said… 'The Masked One sees all.'"
Silence.
Then, the bell rang cold, mechanical, too normal for a morning like this.
But Queen's Crest never stopped.
Classes continued. Uniforms pressed. Smiles practiced.
And in the shadows of the rose maze, something still bled.