SWEETSCENT DAMNATION Chapter 2: "Day One. Exams"

The basement swallowed them whole, and for a moment—a single, breathless moment—Wei Jinchen thought they'd made a terrible mistake.

Then the darkness shifted .

Not light. Not exactly. But something in his vision adjusted, a filter clicking into place that let him see what human eyes shouldn't perceive. The stone walls of the basement corridor were wrong—covered in writing, thousands of words scratched into the rock with fingernails or teeth or worse, layered over each other in languages that hurt to look at directly.

And in front of his face, floating like a hallucination he couldn't blink away:

[SYSTEM WINDOW — WEI JINCHEN] [Status: Active — Instance Locked] [Time: 23:58:47] [Location: Blackwood Academy — Basement Level] [Party: 3/3] [Guardian Status: Dormant (Room 314)] [Current Objective: SURVIVE] [Hidden Route Progress: 12%]

Note: Window functions disabled until instance completion. Display only.

Wei Jinchen stared at the translucent interface. It hovered in his peripheral vision, responding to his gaze—when he looked directly at it, it sharpened. When he looked away, it faded to a ghostly afterimage. He tried to swipe it away, to interact with it, but his fingers passed through the glowing text like smoke.

"Can you see that?" he whispered.

"See what?" Pang Duo's voice trembled from the darkness behind him.

"The... window. The System window."

A pause. Then Su Meiyan: "I see it. Floating. Can't touch it."

"Me too," Pang Duo admitted. "It says 'display only.' Like we're supposed to... watch?"

Wei Jinchen filed this away. The System was tracking them. Measuring them. Gamifying them. The "Hidden Route Progress" bar sent something cold through his chest—twelve percent already, just from finding the basement? What would completion look like?

"Move," he said, because the darkness was shifting again, because he could hear something in the walls that wasn't rats, because the writing on the stones was starting to glow with faint, bioluminescent light. "The founder's room. Now."

They ran.

Not the reckless, panicked flight of prey—the controlled, tactical sprint of people who understood that stopping meant dying. Wei Jinchen led, his bulk somehow silent on the stone floor, Su Meiyan behind him with her investigator's precision, Pang Duo bringing up the rear with the desperate energy of someone who had decided that fear was less important than breath.

The corridor branched. Left, right, straight ahead into deeper dark.

Wei Jinchen went left—not because he knew, but because the writing on the left wall was freshest, because he could smell something underneath the rot and the damp, something that reminded him of old libraries and lemon drops and childhood .

The door was there. Of course it was. Wooden, ordinary, with a brass handle shaped like a screaming face.

He didn't hesitate. He turned the handle.

The screaming face bit him.

Not metaphorically—the metal moved , jaws clamping down on his palm with the strength of a bear trap. Wei Jinchen grunted, blood welling between his fingers, and pushed —through the pain, through the instinct to pull away, through the part of his brain that was screaming that this was wrong, all of it was wrong—

The door opened.

The founder's room was small. Circular. Stone walls covered in equations and diagrams that hurt to look at, that seemed to move when he wasn't watching directly. In the center: a desk. On the desk: a book, open to a page that showed the school from above—a perfect architectural diagram with one difference from reality.

In the diagram, the school had a basement that went down forever. And at the bottom, something curled in on itself, something that wore the school's shape like a skin.

"Don't look at it directly," Wei Jinchen said, but he was already looking, already understanding , the Tony Stark part of his brain firing on every cylinder, devouring the information like oxygen. "The founder—he didn't build the school on top of something. He built the school around something. The rules, the dolls, the night horrors—they're containment. We're inside a lock, and the thing in the dark is what it's locking."

Su Meiyan was at his shoulder, her System window flickering in her eyes as she tried to record what she saw. "The upgrade condition. We have to... what? Strengthen the lock? Break it?"

"Complete the founder's work." Wei Jinchen reached for the book—gingerly, with his uninjured hand—and the pages turned on their own, stopping at a spread that showed four figures standing in a circle, each holding a doll. "The Guardian Dolls. They're not just protection. They're keys . Four keys, four locks, four—"

The floor shook.

Not an earthquake. A footstep . Something massive, something that had heard them, something that was turning its attention toward the tiny room where three E-rank players were meddling with forces they didn't understand.

"Run," Wei Jinchen said, but he was already grabbing the book—the book was coming with them , the System be damned—and they were moving, back through the door, back into the corridor that was now wrong , the walls closer, the ceiling lower, the writing on the stones screaming words that weren't words, that were hunger made sound.

They ran.

Upstairs—somehow, impossibly, the stairs were where they hadn't been before, a spiral of stone that went up and up and up , more floors than the dormitory had from outside. Wei Jinchen's lungs burned. His hand bled. The book under his arm was warm, alive , its pages rustling with sounds that weren't paper.

Behind them, the footstep came again. Closer.

"Midnight," Su Meiyan gasped. "It's midnight—"

The rules. Wei Jinchen's brain, even running, even terrified, clicked through the rules like a slot machine hitting jackpot. Do not leave your dormitory after midnight. They weren't in their dormitory. They were in the basement, in the school's heart, where the rules were different, where the rules were—

"The dolls," he realized. "We left the dolls—"

The corridor ahead exploded into light.

Not warm light. Not safe light. The harsh, clinical glow of System notification, filling the hallway like a physical force, and in that light, Wei Jinchen saw what was chasing them.

He wished he hadn't.

It was the school. Or rather, it was what the school was digesting —a mass of uniforms and flesh and furniture, all melted together into something that crawled on dozens of human legs, that wore faces like masks, that reached for them with hands that ended in fountain pens and rulers and teeth .

[SYSTEM ALERT]

[Instance Anomaly Detected]

[E-Rank Threshold Exceeded]

[Upgrade Sequence Initiated...]

The words burned across all three of their windows, crimson and gold, and the thing—the founder's mistake , the thing the school had been built to contain—screamed .

Wei Jinchen didn't think. He acted.

He threw the book.

Not at the monster—through it, past it, to the end of the corridor where a door had appeared, a door that matched his room number, 314 , that shouldn't exist here but did, that opened as the book approached—

The monster lunged.

Wei Jinchen grabbed Pang Duo and Su Meiyan and jumped , through the door, into the room that was his room but wasn't, into the space where his Guardian Doll sat on the pillow with its button eyes glowing gold—

The door slammed shut.

Silence.

Wei Jinchen lay on the floor, bleeding, gasping, two other humans crushed beneath his bulk, and stared at the ceiling of Room 314 while his heart tried to escape his ribs.

The doll turned its head to look at him.

"Thank you," Wei Jinchen whispered to it.

The doll smiled.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

[Instance 1: "Don't Open the Door"]

[Rank Upgrade: E → D]

[Hidden Route Completion: 35%]

[New Objective: Maintain Survival Until Dawn]

[Special Condition: The Founder Has Noticed You]

He saw the notification as he lay there, floating in his peripheral vision, the words glowing with what he was starting to recognize as sarcasm . The System had opinions. The System was enjoying this.

"Your hand," Su Meiyan said, already shifting into investigator mode, already pulling fabric from her uniform to bind the wound. "It's deep. You'll need—"

"I'll need to not die." Wei Jinchen sat up, wincing. The book was on the floor beside him, closed now, innocent-looking. "The upgrade. We triggered something. The instance is... bigger now. More complex."

"D-rank," Pang Duo read from his own window, his voice hollow. "It got harder because we succeeded?"

"It got harder because we progressed ." Wei Jinchen stood, testing his weight on legs that felt like jelly. "The founder's room was a test. We passed. Now the instance has to account for us, has to... scale."

He looked at the window, at the words "The Founder Has Noticed You," and felt something that wasn't quite fear. Anticipation, maybe. The feeling of a puzzle box clicking open, revealing another box inside.

"Sleep," he said. "Both of you. Stay in my room—the rules said 'dormitory,' not 'individual room.' Safety in numbers. I'll keep watch."

"You need rest too," Su Meiyan argued.

"I'll rest when I'm dead." He said it with a smile, a joke, but the words hung in the air wrong, too true, too recent. "Again, I mean. I'll rest when I'm dead again."

They slept. Eventually. Curled on his floor like puppies, their Guardian Dolls clutched in their arms—Pang Duo's whispering "Buttercup" in his sleep, Su Meiyan's unnamed but held like a weapon.

Wei Jinchen sat by the window, watching the fog, watching for silver-haired figures that didn't appear.

His window showed 3:47 AM when the knocking started.

Not at his door. At the window.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

He didn't look. The rules said do not look out your window after 3AM , and he understood now that the rules were gifts , that they were the founder's last kindness, the blueprint for survival in a place designed to consume.

Tap. Tap-tap.

"Go away," he whispered to the glass.

The tapping stopped.

A voice, then—childish, sweet, wrong in ways that made his teeth hurt: "Big brother. I lost my doll. Can I come in and look?"

Wei Jinchen put a lemon drop in his mouth and said nothing.

"I know you're there," the voice sang. "I can smell your blood. I can smell your fear . Won't you be kind? Won't you open the window, just a crack?"

He thought of the thing in the basement. Of the book under his pillow. Of the way the Guardian Doll's eyes had glowed when they needed protection.

"No," he said.

The window flexed . The glass bent inward, bowing under pressure that shouldn't exist, and for a moment Wei Jinchen saw what was outside—not fog, not night, but a mouth , enormous, lined with windows like teeth, and in each window a face he almost recognized—

The doll on his pillow hissed .

The window snapped back. The fog returned. The voice was gone, leaving only a smear of something wet on the glass that looked disturbingly like a smile.

Wei Jinchen sat very still until dawn.

[LIVESTREAM NOTIFICATION]

[Current viewers: 2,400,000]

[Instance 1: "Don't Open the Door" — UPGRADED TO D-RANK]

[Featured Player: WEI JINCHEN — Designation: Alpha]

[New Tags: #FounderHunter #RuleLawyer #CandyAlpha]

[Top donation: 100,000 Echoes — "HE UPGRADED AN E-RANK INSTANCE I AM SCREAMING"]

[Comment: "Did he just... did he just tell a window monster NO???"]

[Comment: "The way he offered the doll his thanks I am NOT crying"]

[Comment: "Candy Alpha is built different. Built bear. Built unhinged."]

Morning came with the sound of a bell—ordinary, school-like, grotesque in its normalcy.

Wei Jinchen opened his eyes to find he'd fallen asleep sitting up, his back against the wall, his wounded hand throbbing in its makeshift bandage. Pang Duo and Su Meiyan were stirring on the floor, confused, terrified, alive .

And in front of each of them, glowing with fresh information:

[SYSTEM WINDOW — WEI JINCHEN] [Status: Active — Instance Locked] [Time: 07:00:00] [Location: Blackwood Academy — West Dormitory, Room 314] [Party: 3/3] [Guardian Status: Active — Bond Forming] [Current Objective: Attend Classes] [Hidden Route Progress: 35%] [New Condition: The Founder Watches] [Inventory: Founder's Codex (1), Lemon Drops (12), Coupons (40)]

Daily Schedule: 08:00 — Mathematics (Room 201) 10:00 — Literature (Room 105) 13:00 — History (Room 304) ⚠️ 15:00 — Physical Education (Courtyard)

Note: Attendance mandatory. Performance evaluated.

Wei Jinchen stared at the schedule. At the warning symbol next to Room 304. At the way his Guardian Doll—Buttercup, he'd named her in his head, though he hadn't said it aloud—seemed to be looking at the same information, its button eyes reflecting light that wasn't there.

"Classes," he said aloud. "The System wants us to go to class ."

"While the founder watches," Su Meiyan read from her own window, her voice flat. "While the thing in the basement knows our faces. While—" she gestured at the window, at the smear that was still there, still smiling "—while that is still outside."

"Especially then." Wei Jinchen stood, stretching muscles that protested, checking his wounds. The bite on his hand had closed overnight—not healed, exactly, but sealed , the skin shiny and tight like a scar that had formed in hours instead of years. "The school is a lock, remember? The classes are part of the mechanism. The founder built this place to contain something, and the routine—the normalcy —that's the warding. That's what keeps it controlled."

"So we play student?" Pang Duo asked, incredulous. "We do homework ?"

"We do homework," Wei Jinchen confirmed, already moving to the small sink to wash his face, to straighten his uniform, to become the person the school needed him to be. "We raise our hands. We take notes. We become so boring, so ordinary , that the horrors don't notice us."

He met his own eyes in the mirror. They were tired. They were scared. But they were also calculating , already running scenarios, already mapping the day ahead.

"And while we do that," he added, popping a lemon drop into his mouth, "we pay attention to everything the NPCs don't want us to see."

The school day was a masterpiece of mundane evil.

Wei Jinchen sat in Mathematics at 08:00, in a classroom of terrified players and blank-faced NPC students, and listened to a teacher who might have been forty or four hundred explain calculus with fingers that bent wrong, that had too many joints. The lesson was real. The equations were correct. When Wei Jinchen raised his hand to answer a question about derivatives, the teacher smiled with teeth that went back too far, and said, "Very good, Mr. Wei. Five points."

His System window flickered: [Academic Performance: Above Average]

He wasn't trying to game the system. He genuinely found it interesting—the way the math worked, the way the horror was layered under functionality, the way the founder had built a place where learning and dying were intertwined. When the teacher assigned homework, he wrote it down. When the NPC student beside him—a girl with braids that moved independently—whispered that the answer to question seven was "run," he corrected her gently and showed his work.

[Viewer DarkGodXiu donated 5,000 Echoes: "why is he doing his homework. WHY IS HE DOING HIS HOMEWORK."]

The notification appeared in his peripheral vision, translucent gold text that only he could see. Wei Jinchen almost laughed—almost broke the careful composure he was maintaining—at the thought of invisible gods watching him solve for x while monsters prowled the halls.

Literature at 10:00 was worse.

The text was The Castle of Otranto , a Gothic novel about architecture and doom. The NPC teacher—a man with no shadow—led discussion about "the symbolism of doors" with a enthusiasm that felt personal. When he called on Wei Jinchen to analyze the scene where the protagonist refuses to open a door, the classroom went silent.

"The door represents knowledge," Wei Jinchen said carefully, aware that every word might be a test, a trap, a trigger. "The refusal to open it is fear of what knowing costs. But the novel suggests that not opening it is worse—that the unknown behind the door grows in power the longer it's denied."

The teacher's smile was genuine. That was the horror. "And in our context, Mr. Wei? In the context of Blackwood Academy?"

Wei Jinchen met his eyes—dark, empty, hungry . "Some doors should stay closed until you're ready to face what's behind them. Preparation is survival."

"Excellent." The teacher turned back to the board, and Wei Jinchen's window updated: [Literary Analysis: Insightful — Hidden Route Progress: 38%]

He was learning the language of the place. The founder had built puzzles into everything, rewards for those who paid attention, death for those who didn't. The school wasn't just a lock—it was a test , and Wei Jinchen had always been good at tests.

Lunch was in the cafeteria, a Gothic hall of long tables and suspicious food.

Su Meiyan found him there, sliding onto the bench with the grace of someone who'd learned to make herself small in dangerous spaces. Her eyes were sharp, cataloging everything—the NPC students who didn't eat, the teachers who watched from the corners, the players who were already breaking, already showing cracks.

"The teachers are surveillance," she said without preamble. "They're not just watching for rule-breakers. They're watching for... potential. The ones who ask too many questions, who map too carefully, who think too much. They're flagged."

Wei Jinchen nodded, chewing a sandwich that tasted like cardboard and memory. "I noticed. The NPC students avoid certain areas—hallways, stairwells, Room 304." He pulled out his notebook, the one he'd been using for "class notes," and showed her what he'd drawn: a map of the school, every avoided location marked with a careful X. "They're not random. They form a pattern. A spiral, leading down."

"To the basement," Su Meiyan finished.

"To the founder. To whatever he built this place to contain." Wei Jinchen tapped the center of the spiral. "Room 304 is on the schedule today. History class. The warning symbol means something."

"It's a trap."

"It's an opportunity ." He took another bite of the tasteless sandwich, chewed thoughtfully. "The founder wants us to find him. He built the hidden routes, the puzzles, the upgrade conditions. He's bored, Su Meiyan. He's been locked in this school for—" he gestured at the walls, at the age in the stones "—for longer than we can imagine. And we're the most interesting thing that's happened to him in decades."

"That doesn't make him friendly."

"No. But it makes him invested ." Wei Jinchen closed the notebook, met her eyes. "We need to survive Room 304. We need to see what he's showing us. And we need to do it without triggering whatever killed the last players who got this far."

Pang Duo arrived then, breathless, his round face flushed with terror and excitement. He slid onto the bench beside Wei Jinchen, close enough to share warmth, and whispered: "I heard something. NPC students, by the lockers—they didn't see me. One of them said 'room 304 again' to another one, and they both looked scared . Not fake scared. Real scared. Then they saw me and went all blank-faced."

Wei Jinchen's window flickered: [Information Acquired: Room 304 Significance]

"Again," he repeated. "That implies repetition. That implies... cycles."

He looked at his two companions—this terrified boy who'd attached himself like a limpet, this sharp-eyed woman who respected competence over comfort. They were his party. His responsibility. The System had grouped them together for reasons he didn't fully understand yet, bonds forming in the pressure cooker of survival.

"History class," he said. "We go together. We stay together. And whatever happens in Room 304, we remember that the founder is watching—that he wants to see what we'll do."

"That's not comforting," Pang Duo said.

"It wasn't meant to be." Wei Jinchen stood, gathering his things, his Guardian Doll heavy in his pocket where he'd transferred it for safekeeping. "It was meant to keep us alive."

The Guardian Doll distribution happened at the end of the school day, a System-mandated ritual that gathered all surviving players in the dormitory common room.

Forty-three had entered. Thirty-one remained.

The missing twelve were not discussed. Their rooms were sealed. Their names were already fading from memory, a cognitive blur that Wei Jinchen fought against by writing them down: Li Hong. Chen Wei. The tattooed man. The woman with the lawyer.

The dolls were arranged on tables in neat rows—small, cloth, slightly off in proportions that suggested handmade care and inhuman aesthetics. Button eyes that caught light wrong. Stitched smiles that seemed to shift when not observed.

"Each participant will collect one Guardian from the dormitory common room," the System announced, its voice coming from everywhere and nowhere, clean and cold and pleased . "Do not damage your Guardian. Do not discard your Guardian."

Players moved forward. Some grabbed randomly, desperate to complete the requirement. Others hesitated, sensing the weight of the choice. One man—the same loud, angry man from the assembly, the one who'd tried to fight the prefect—snorted and picked up the nearest doll.

"Stupid toy," he said, and threw it across the room.

The doll hit the wall with a sound like a wet slap. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the man screamed .

It wasn't pain, exactly. It was absence —the sudden, violent removal of something the others couldn't see. His Guardian status on his System window—visible to those nearby—flickered from [Active] to [VOID] to [CONSUMED].

The walls absorbed him.

Not metaphorically. The stone flowed , reaching out with architectural fingers, pulling him into the masonry with the efficiency of a Venus flytrap. His scream cut off mid-note, and where he'd stood, there was only smooth floor, smooth wall, and a faint, fading smell of ozone.

[System Notification: Guardian Protocol Violation]

[Penalty Applied]

The silence that followed was absolute.

Wei Jinchen moved first. He approached the table—not running, not hesitant, with the calm deliberation of someone who understood that respect was survival. He looked at the dolls, really looked, letting his intuition guide him past the ones that felt cold, or hungry, or wrong , until his hand closed on one that felt... warm. Interested. Curious .

He lifted it. Looked into its button eyes—black, glossy, reflecting his own face distorted small.

"Hello," he said, genuinely. "I'm Wei Jinchen. I'll take good care of you, and I hope you'll do the same for me."

The doll's smile seemed to soften. In his window, text appeared: [Guardian Bond Initiated: Buttercup]

"Buttercup," he repeated, surprised by the name that appeared in his mind, unbidden. "That's a good name."

He tucked her carefully into his pocket, where she settled with the weight of a promise.

Pang Duo was next, moving with the desperate speed of someone who'd just seen death demonstrated. He grabbed a doll at random, then froze, staring at it. "You're... you're blue. Like the sky. I'll call you Sky." His window updated: [Guardian Bond Initiated: Sky]

Su Meiyan approached last. She didn't speak to her doll, didn't name it immediately. She simply pocketed it with the same efficiency she applied to evidence collection, the same zero-ceremony practicality. But Wei Jinchen noticed how her hand lingered for just a moment on the cloth body, how her fingers traced the stitched smile with something almost like gentleness.

Her window read: [Guardian Bond Initiated: [Pending]]

"You're supposed to name them," Pang Duo said.

"I'll name it when it earns one," Su Meiyan replied. But she kept her hand in her pocket, touching the doll, for the rest of the evening.

The announcement came at 11:47 PM.

Wei Jinchen was in his room, reviewing his notes by candlelight—the school had electricity during the day, but after dark, only flame was permitted, another rule, another warding mechanism. Buttercup sat on his pillow, watching the door. Sky and Su Meiyan's unnamed guardian were in their respective pockets, a network of protection woven through the small space.

The shouting started in the hallway.

"I found it!" The voice was familiar—the angry man from the common room, the one who'd survived the doll-throwing incident by sheer luck, or perhaps because the System enjoyed variety in its punishments. "The gate mechanism! There's a weak point in the iron—we can break it! We can leave !"

Wei Jinchen was on his feet before he thought, Buttercup in his pocket, his window flashing warnings he couldn't fully read.

In the hallway, eight players had gathered around the man—desperate faces, tired faces, faces that had decided that any risk was better than another night in this place. They held improvised weapons—chair legs, broken glass, a fire extinguisher. They looked at Wei Jinchen with suspicion, with hope, with the particular madness of people who'd chosen their path and needed others to validate it.

"You're the smart one," the leader said, not kindly. "The one who does homework while people die. You want in? We leave in thirteen minutes. Midnight. When the things are... busy. We break the gate, we run for the town, we—"

"You'll die," Wei Jinchen said. Flat. Certain. "The gate is part of the lock. Breaking it doesn't open the school—it opens what the school contains. You'll let the basement out."

"You don't know that."

"I found the founder's room." Wei Jinchen let the words land, watched their faces shift from certainty to doubt. "I saw the diagrams. The school is a seal, and the gate is the capstone. You break it, you break everything."

The leader stepped forward, aggressive, afraid. "You're lying. You want to keep us here, keep the rewards for yourself, the hidden routes—"

"I want you to live." Wei Jinchen looked at each of them, these eight people who'd survived so much only to choose death. "I want you to see morning. But if you open that gate, I can't help you. None of us can."

"Then don't help." The leader turned away, dismissing him. "Stay here with your dolls and your homework. We're leaving."

They marched down the hallway, eight desperate souls, and Wei Jinchen stood in his doorway and watched them go.

Pang Duo appeared beside him, trembling. "We should stop them."

"How?" Su Meiyan asked from his other side, her voice bitter. "Tie them up? Lock them in? We don't have the right to choose for them."

"We have the responsibility to try." But Wei Jinchen didn't move. He was watching his window, watching the time tick from 11:48 to 11:49, feeling the school shift around them, the rules tightening, the night preparing its hungers.

At 11:50, the eight players reached the gate.

At 11:51, they began to strike the iron with their improvised weapons, the sound ringing through the courtyard like a bell, like a summons, like dinner being called .

At 11:52, the fog moved.

Wei Jinchen saw it from his window—saw the grey coils thicken, congeal, reach toward the gate with tendrils that weren't weather, that were fingers , dozens of them, hundreds, extending from the shape that had been waiting in the fog since they arrived.

The silver-haired figure was there too. Standing at the edge of the light, watching, his pale eyes reflecting the chaos with an expression that might have been interest or might have been hunger.

He didn't intervene. He never intervened. He was a god, or something like it, and gods didn't save people— they observed .

At 11:53, the gate cracked.

Not broke—cracked , a sound like a bone snapping, like a seal breaking, like the first note of a song that ended in screaming. The fog surged forward, and the eight players realized, too late, what they'd done.

Wei Jinchen closed his eyes.

He didn't close his ears.

When the screaming stopped, when the System notifications chimed [Player Death x8] in chorus, when the silence returned heavy and wet and satisfied , he opened his eyes again.

The gate was whole. The fog was quiet. The silver-haired figure was gone, if he'd ever been there at all.

But the school had changed. Wei Jinchen could feel it in his bones, in his bond with Buttercup, in the way his window now read [Instance Status: D-Rank (Unstable)].

The founder was pleased. The founder was interested .

And midnight was coming again.

[LIVESTREAM NOTIFICATION]

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[Comment: "The way he closed his eyes. The way he *listened*. I am destroyed."]

[Comment: "Silver-haired watcher count: 3. He appears at every death. Coincidence?"]

[Comment: "Candy Alpha is going to fix this school or die trying and I don't know which I want more"]

Wei Jinchen sat on his bed, Buttercup in his lap, and waited for dawn.

Room 304 tomorrow. History class. The spiral's heart.

He was afraid. He was always afraid. But he was also curious , and that curiosity was a flame that horror couldn't extinguish, that death itself had failed to smother.

"Founder," he whispered to the dark, not knowing if he was heard, not caring. "I see your puzzle. I'm going to solve it."

Somewhere in the school's bones, something ancient smiled.

[End of Chapter 2]

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