For the first time in Queen's Crest history, the gates didn't just close, they shook.
Hundreds of hands slammed against them from the outside. Parents shouting names. Guards yelling orders. Helicopters circled low, cutting the night into harsh white flashes that sliced across dorm windows where terrified faces peeked out between curtains.
Three girls missing.
And the school which was pictured perfect, polished, untouchable was starting to crack.
Inside the grand dining hall, Headmistress Nwachukwu stood still before the stained-glass mural of the school's founders. The morning light fractured across her face, painting her skin in broken blues and reds.
Behind her, Principal Dapo wiped sweat from his temple. His tie hung loose, his voice barely a whisper.
"They want blood, ma'am."
She didn't turn. "They'll get truth instead. But not yet."
Down below, in the underground gymnasium, every student had been herded in like cattle. Cross-legged rows. Silent. Eyes wide. Whispers spreading like static through the air.
Adrian sat alone, one hand clenched tight, thumb brushing the scar on his wrist like a nervous tic.
Amara was across the room, flanked by her usual circle except they weren't whispering gossip this time. They were whispering prayers.
The fear in that hall was animal-level. You could feel it breathing.
Then, without warning, the auditorium screens flickered on.
A blue flash. Then static. Then movement.
Someone screamed before the sound even started.
The video was grainy, shaky like it had been shot on a dying phone. The image jerked, revealing a wall splattered in dark streaks.
Then, a voice. Distorted. Mechanical, yet almost human.
"Four keys. Four bloodlines. One vault."
A gloved hand reached into the frame, holding up a charred school crest pin. Burned, melted at the edges.
Then the camera panned left.
A girl tied to a chair. Eyes wide. Mouth taped. Skin pale.
Not Toni. Not the second girl.
A third.
The scream that followed didn't sound real. It sounded broken.
Students jumped to their feet. Some screamed back. One fainted. Two others just started crying quietly, shaking, like their bodies couldn't decide what to do first.
By the time the headmistress rushed forward to kill the feed, it was too late. The video had already burned itself into everyone's memory.
Queen's Crest wasn't a school anymore.
It was a battlefield wearing a uniform.
---
AUTHOR'S NOTE – MID-CHAOS RAMBLE
Heyyy, breathe, okay? 👀
I know your heart's pounding. Mine too. I said from jump Queen's Crest wasn't about fancy cafeterias and ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Nah. It's about secrets dressed like scholarships. 😤
We're deep in the chaos arc now. The calm is dead. The brakes are gone. It's freefall.
If you're screaming internally same.
And for those DMing me theories: yes, Amara's colder than a stainless-steel morgue slab. Yes, Adrian's acting way too calm for someone knee-deep in murder mystery energy. And Toni? Let's just say… she's not lost. She's evolving.
Keep guessing. I'm not confirming anything.
Now, let's get back to the madness.
---
By dawn, Queen's Crest looked like a military base.
Black vans lined the courtyard. Armed officers patrolled the halls in neat, terrifying formation. Their boots echoed louder than the students' whispers. Every dorm room was searched. Every personal tablet seized.
A full data sweep was ordered family backgrounds, medical histories, even bloodline reports.
Someone was hunting for patterns.
Adrian was the first to be called in.
He sat across a steel table in the administration wing. Two national agents faced him. His father stood behind them, silent, unreadable. Headmistress Nwachukwu paced slowly by the window.
The room smelled like disinfectant and fear.
The lead agent spoke first. "Do you know what the Vault is?"
Adrian's pulse raced, but his face stayed calm. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I know it's beneath the school."
The agent leaned forward. "How do you know that?"
Adrian's gaze flicked toward his father. "Because I was sent here to find it."
A silence so sharp it hurt filled the room.
The second agent spoke next. "Four keys. Four bloodlines. You mentioned it before. You're saying you're one of them?"
"I don't think," Adrian said. "I know."
His father's jaw tightened.
"And the others?"
Adrian exhaled. "Amara. Toni. And the third girl." He paused. "The one from the video."
"That's not coincidence," the agent muttered.
"No," Adrian said. "That's design."
---
Meanwhile, Amara had found her own form of escape.
The east tower's old greenhouse abandoned, glass cracked, the floor taken over by weeds and vines. No cameras. No microphones. Just the smell of wet soil and secrets.
She stood by a shattered window, clutching a burner phone.
"He's remembering," she whispered. "Pieces are coming back. I can't hold him off much longer."
A voice on the other end was low, male, unfamiliar.
"Then start phase two. You know what's at stake."
"I'm not killing for them," she hissed.
"You already did," the voice said softly. "Years ago."
Silence.
She hung up. Her hands shook. The phone fell into the dirt.
Rain began to tap against the glass roof. Distant thunder rolled across the campus like an omen nobody wanted to name.
For a long moment, Amara just stood there, breathing hard, staring at her reflection in the glass was fractured, doubled, like even the world couldn't decide who she really was anymore.
---
By evening, Queen's Crest went into total lockdown.
Doors locked. Windows sealed. Meals slid through compartments like prison trays. Bathroom visits scheduled.
No one talked. No one slept.
But fear doesn't stay still for long.
At 2:31 a.m., Amara slipped out.
She moved barefoot, quiet, wrapped in black. Adrian was already waiting for her at the statue of Lady Crest, the stone woman who'd founded the academy a century ago.
"You ready to dig?" she asked.
He didn't answer. Just handed her a flashlight.
They walked. Past the chapel. Through the cemetery behind the woods. The air smelled like wet leaves and metal.
At last, they stopped in front of an old trapdoor wooden, iron-framed, marked by four crests carved deep into its surface.
Adrian crouched. His breath fogged in the cold.
"Four keys," he whispered. "Four bloodlines."
Amara nodded. "We match two."
He pulled a dagger from his jacket. The blade gleamed faintly.
"Just a drop," he said.
They cut their palms. Pressed their blood against the symbols.
One crest glowed. Then another.
The ground shuddered like the earth itself was exhaling.
The forest went silent.
Somewhere far beneath them, gears shifted. Metal groaned.
And from the cracks between the trapdoor planks, a faint red light seeped throug pulsing, alive, almost breathing.
The Vault of Queen's Crest had awakened.
Amara stepped back, chest heaving. "What did we just do?"
Adrian stared down at the light. His voice came out low, steady, and wrong.
"We didn't open it," he said. "It opened for us."
And in the darkness below, something smiled.
---
AUTHOR'S NOTE – AFTER THE AWAKENING
Alright. Stop. Breathe. Hydrate. You earned it.
That ending? Yeah, it's exactly what you think it is. The Vault's real. The experiments are real. The lies? Tripled.
This is where the tone shifts. We've hit the halfway mark of chaos. From here on, Queen's Crest stops being about missing students and starts being about systems who built them, who broke them, and who's bleeding for them now.
I wanted this chapter to feel cinematic. Thunder outside. Dread inside. Two teenagers realizing they might be the center of something built decades before they were even born.
And Amara? She's not heartless she's haunted.
Adrian's not brave, he's used.
Toni? Oh, she's not missing. She's the test that passed.
Keep reading. Things are about to break in ways you won't see coming.
This is the chapter where Queen's Crest stops pretending it's a school.
It's a lab.
And class is back in session.
#EndOfChapterFourteen