Calla didn't head back to her dorm.
She waited until lights-out — when the halls went quiet, when the footsteps faded — and slipped out the east door behind the dining hall. No cameras over here. No faculty night-watch patrols. She'd checked.
Twice.
Her boots hit the gravel path with a quiet crunch. The campus always looked different at night — like the buildings had secrets they only whispered when the sun went down. She liked that.
She liked secrets.
Even when they scared her a little.
She pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt and kept walking.
Toward the old science building.
She hadn't told Ronan everything.
Not about the dreams.
Not about the static in her head when she got too close to the woods.
And definitely not about the symbol she found etched under her dorm room bedframe — the same one from the tree.
It had burned when she touched it. Not hot. Just... wrong. Like her soul pulled back.
She took a picture, but just like the others, it vanished from her gallery.
Still, she wasn't the type to let a little ghost glitch stop her.
The back door of the science building was technically sealed off. Biohazard signs, rusted padlock, campus warning flyers.
She jimmied it open in under a minute.
Inside, the air was cold.
Stale.
She moved through the hall with her flashlight off, letting her eyes adjust. Moonlight spilled through the broken skylights above. She passed dark labs filled with empty test tubes and old anatomy models missing arms and eyes.
This place had been shut down for years.
Supposedly.
She stopped at the last door — the one with the reinforced glass. Something about it always felt... wrong. Like it was humming, just outside her hearing range.
She reached for the knob.
It turned.
Unlocked.
"That's not creepy at all," she muttered.
Inside, the room looked like a lab. Tables, beakers, a blackboard with smeared chalk lines.
But on the floor, drawn in something dark and sticky, was a circle.
A big one.
Not paint. Not ink.
She crouched down.
"Is that—?"
Before she could touch it, her phone vibrated.
A text.
Unknown Number:
you shouldn't be here
She stood up fast.
"Okay," she whispered. "Nope. Nope, nope—"
A loud metallic clatter echoed behind her.
She spun.
Nothing.
Just the empty room.
But when she turned back toward the door, it wasn't empty anymore.
A man was standing there.
Not faculty.
Too tall. Too sharp. Dressed like he stepped out of a funeral in a forest.
She blinked.
And he was gone.
Just like that.
But her phone vibrated again.
RUN.
And this time, she did.
She didn't stop until she was back outside, lungs heaving, hands shaking.
That wasn't human.
Something deep in her gut told her that.
She stared back at the building. The upper floor lights flickered once. Then died.
Something in there saw her.
And let her go.
This time.