The chapel bells tolled at midnight.
But no one had rung them.
The sound bled through the halls like an alarm from another century slow, deliberate, and wrong.
Every girl in Queen's Crest woke at once. Blankets flew. Lamps switched on. The air itself felt disturbed cold, ancient, expectant.
In Dorm C, a scream split the silence.
Another girl was missing.
Again.
Two girls. Two days. Two disappearances.
No explanations. No suspects. No remains.
Only fear which were raw and unspoken.
---
The school's speaker system, dead for years, suddenly hissed to life. A wall of static buzzed, then cracked open into a voice.
Distorted. Male. Mechanical.
"One throne must rise. The rest shall be swallowed."
The girls froze. The air shifted heavy, electrified, like the school itself had heard it too.
Then panic didn't spread.
It detonated.
Doors slammed open. Students poured into the corridors robes, slippers, tears. Someone shouted that it was a prank. Someone else yelled that it wasn't.
The lights flickered once, twice then steadied.
What they revealed looked like a war zone.
Phones shattered. Textbooks torn open. Lockers ripped off hinges.
And across the main corridor wall, written in blood-red lipstick:
"THE WANTED ISN'T COMPLETE."
---
Downstairs, beneath the east wing, Headmistress Nwachukwu stood in front of a locked iron door.
It wasn't listed on any blueprint. Most of the staff didn't even know the archives went this deep.
She did.
Her hand trembled as she pulled a thin chain from beneath her blouse. At the end hung a rusted key older than the school itself.
It fit.
The lock clicked.
Inside was a vault. Or what was left of it.
Empty shelves. A thick layer of dust disturbed by fresh footprints.
Whatever had been locked away, wasn't anymore.
Her breath caught. She whispered to herself, voice cracking,
"Providence forgive us."
Behind her, something shifted in the shadows.
A figure watching.
Silent.
---
Amara was running.
She didn't remember how it started just the cold rush of fear and the echo of something behind her. Her bare feet slapped against the marble, her nightgown trailing as she darted down the long library corridor.
She wasn't hearing footsteps.
She was hearing breathing.
Slow. Wet. Wrong.
She turned a corner and pressed herself between two towering shelves. Her chest heaved. The air reeked of old paper and dust.
A book leaned out just enough to catch her arm Queen's Crest: Founding Documents.
She froze.
Something white slipped from between the shelves, like it had been waiting there.
A note.
Her name on the front.
Hands shaking, she unfolded it.
"You were never the queen. Only the bait."
Her pulse stopped.
Then, a whisper not in her head, but right behind her ear:
"Run."
She did.
---
Adrian stood by the fountain in the courtyard.
Same broken silence. Same blood-colored water rippling under the moonlight.
But the statue at its center the crowned woman was different.
Her head was gone.
Adrian stared until he couldn't breathe.
"Adrian."
He turned.
His father stood a few feet away, no security, no guards. Just a man in a rumpled coat and eyes that looked like they hadn't slept in days.
The Vice President of the Republic here, in the middle of the night, at his son's boarding school.
Adrian didn't speak.
He didn't have to.
"I told your mother we shouldn't have let you come here," his father said quietly. "You weren't supposed to trigger the Providence."
Adrian blinked. "The what?"
"The Providence," his father repeated, like the word hurt. "It's not a religion. It's a program. The Founding Line. The reason this school exists."
Adrian frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"The first headmistress wasn't an educator," his father said. "She was a researcher for the Providence Council. They created this place to control the experiment."
"Experiment?"
His father's jaw clenched. "Legacy selection. Every few generations, they choose successors not by merit, but by blood. Only certain children qualify. You weren't supposed to be one of them."
Adrian shook his head. "I don't understand."
"You will," his father said, his voice breaking. "When you see what they buried under the chapel."
He stepped closer, eyes flicking to the fountain. "That water isn't blood. It's synthetic hemoglobin same compound used in the early Providence trials. They thought it could transfer aptitude. Power. Obedience."
Adrian's stomach turned. "So the missing girls-"
His father nodded slowly. "Test subjects. Failed ones. They weren't taken. They were chosen."
Lightning flashed across the courtyard.
And from somewhere deep within the school, a scream tore through the air high, sharp, final.
Adrian didn't move. Neither did his father.
Thunder rolled.
And for the first time, Adrian understood why no one ever really left Queen's Crest.
---
In the west wing, the missing girl was found.
Hanging upside down.
Eyes open.
Lips stitched.
The students who discovered her didn't scream this time. They just stared, numb and hollow, like the horror had finally broken them.
Etched into the marble floor beneath her written in bone dust and blood were the words:
"SHE WAS THE SECOND. ONE MORE TO GO."
---
By morning, the authorities would call it a malfunction.
The headmistress would call it hysteria.
The news would call it tragedy.
But the truth moved differently. Quietly.
It pulsed through the walls. Through the locked gates. Through the heartbeat of the school itself.
Queen's Crest wasn't haunted.
It was operational.
And the program had just been reactivated.
Somewhere, in a hidden room beneath the chapel, a red light blinked.
Then another.
And another.
On a monitor marked "CANDIDATES: REMAINING - 1."
Upstairs, the last chosen girl walked to class barefoot, unaware of the blood drying beneath her feet.
Her name was already in the system.
Next.