At 3:16 a.m., Queen's Crest Academy stopped breathing.
The air itself felt paralyzed. Even the wind outside refused to move.
The girls in Dorm Wing C where Toni's bed still sat perfectly made woke up gasping. Their mirrors caught the moonlight wrong, stretching their faces into frightened strangers.
Then came the siren.
Once.
Then silence.
No footsteps.
No intercom.
Just that unnatural stillness the kind that hums under your skin and whispers: something is watching.
Amara Okonkwo sat up first, sweat trickling down her neck. She wasn't alone. Four others in her dorm had done the same. Nobody dared speak. They just stared at the door, waiting for it to open on its own.
Then… a scream.
Not sharp nor did it sound frightened but ancient.
Like something human remembering how to die.
By the time security reached the east corridor, the girl who screamed was gone.
Only her slippers remained one upright, one toppled right in front of the mirror-lined hallway.
The left one was soaked.
And whatever clung to it was too dark, too thick to be water.
---
Headmistress Nwachukwu called for a full lockdown. Again.
But this time, no one believed her speeches about "safety measures."
Her voice trembled. Her hands shook.
For the first time, even she looked scared.
Queen's Crest wasn't haunted by gossip anymore.
It was infected with truth.
---
Meanwhile, in the library, Adrian Maduako wasn't sleeping.
He hadn't in days.
He sat cross-legged on the floor beside a glowing laptop, light flashing across his face like ghostfire. Beside him was Zara, Year 12 prodigy, socially invisible, academically lethal.
The girl had cracked three layers of school firewalls in under a minute.
"This partition hasn't been touched since 2010," Zara murmured, scrolling through lines of old data. "And… oh my God. The encryption's not even modern. It's Latin."
Adrian frowned. "Latin? For what? A school archive?"
She typed faster. "Not archives. Protocols. Classified under a code name, Project Providence."
He leaned closer. "What's Providence?"
Zara's voice dropped. "It's not a place. It's an experiment."
She clicked open a folder labeled "Phase I 2010".
A video loaded grainy, jittery, color-drained.
On the screen: a younger Headmistress Nwachukwu stood in front of five students girls in older uniforms, faces blurred.
She held something a black crest-shaped container, its metal edges carved with Latin phrases.
Her voice filled the static.
"Each generation must preserve the Providence sequence. The chosen must never learn what sustains the Crest."
The footage glitched.
And for one second just before the feed cut one of the girls screamed.
She was yanked backward by nothing visible.
The clip ended in static.
Zara slammed the laptop shut. "That wasn't school tradition. That was human testing."
Adrian's throat went dry.
He remembered his father's voice the night before: You weren't supposed to trigger the legacy.
He thought it was about power.
But maybe it was about control.
He rose slowly, fists clenched. "My father knew. He sent me here to start this again."
Zara looked up. "So what do we do?"
Adrian's eyes darkened. "We end it. Every file. Every lie. Every part of Queen's Crest that breathes without permission."
---
By morning, Amara found a bone-handled dagger pinned to her locker.
Beneath it, a note written in red ink:
"You were never the Queen. You were just the gatekeeper.
The real throne lies beneath."
She tore the paper, but the message burned behind her eyelids.
When she looked up, someone was watching her from the top floor.
A girl.
In Toni's old uniform.
Eyes empty.
But Toni was gone.
Wasn't she?
---
At dusk, new rules rolled out.
No uncovered mirrors.
No one outside past 8 p.m.
No phones.
No calls.
No exits.
Still, the fear slipped through cracks like smoke.
Students started keeping journals, not for gossip, but for survival.
"Someone moved my bed."
"I heard breathing in the vents."
"My roommate smiled in her sleep but she hasn't smiled in days."
The dorm mothers blamed exhaustion.
But exhaustion doesn't whisper names through locked doors.
---
Adrian met Amara behind the old observatory that night, both of them shadows against the floodlights.
"I saw the footage," he said quietly. "They weren't teaching us history. They were experimenting with it."
Amara folded her arms. "Providence wasn't about faith. It was about hierarchy. They wanted to engineer obedience, breed leadership through conditioning. We're the outcome."
"You're saying we were made for this?"
Her eyes glistened. "Built. Groomed. Sacrificed."
He swallowed. "And Toni?"
Amara's voice cracked. "She touched the crest. She activated the protocol. And now the school's systems are… awake."
"Systems?"
"Not ghosts, Adrian. Machines. The founders used neurological mapping early biotech trials. The crest was the control device. The vault under the chapel isn't a tomb, it's a lab."
---
Far below them, unseen gears turned.
Rust grinding against rust.
Old circuits flickered alive for the first time in decades.
Queen's Crest wasn't whispering.
It was recalibrating.
And every name on the student roster was part of its formula.
---
At 9:04 p.m., the lights in Dorm Wing C flickered again.
A girl whispered something in Yoruba before the power died completely.
When the generators kicked in, her bed was empty.
Third victim.
Someone or probably, something was finishing what Providence started.
---
In the Headmistress's office, Nwachukwu poured herself a drink with shaking hands.
Her phone buzzed. A message from a blocked number:
"You can't bury what you built."
She looked toward her window. The fountain outside glowed red.
Wine-red.
---
And in the chapel, Adrian stood alone.
Zara's laptop flickered on beside him, one file still open:
Project Providence – Phase II
He clicked it.
A photo appeared.
His father.
Standing beside the Headmistress.
And a blueprint of Queen's Crest.
At the bottom:
"Final Subject: A.M."
Adrian stared.
A.M.
His initials.
No.
Her initials too.
Amara Okonkwo.
He exhaled shakily. "God help us."
Except this time, no one was listening.
Because Queen's Crest didn't believe in gods anymore.
Just design...
And the design was complete.
---
Author's Note — HIDE YOUR MIRRORS
If you're still reading, you're either brave or bored or both. Either way, welcome to the mess. Queen's Crest isn't a prep school anymore. It's a war lab wearing Chanel lip gloss.
This chapter was meant to feel like walking through a hallway where every portrait watches you back. That's the tone now scientific horror, not spiritual mumbo-jumbo. You know, Just human cruelty dressed as progress.
To my Amara stans and Adrian truthers: buckle up. Power's about to shift again. Loyalties are cracking like cheap glass, and the next queen? She's not the loudest. She's just the last one breathing.
And yes, I saw the DMs asking if Providence = possession. Nah, babes. It's science gone rogue. That's worse.
Chapter Thirteen's coming like a locked door creaking open in the dark. Step through if you dare. But don't say I didn't warn you.
#EndOfChapterTwelve 🕯️