> "The deeper you dig, the closer you get to the rot."
— Sade's journal
---
📚 The Archive
It wasn't on any map.
The West Wing Archives hadn't been used since a fire shut them down four years ago.
Or so the school claimed.
Sharon slipped inside just after 11 PM, using a borrowed maintenance key. She'd learned which key from Zuri, who was helping more than she admitted.
Inside, the air smelled like dust, wood polish, and something metallic. Old secrets.
Shelves rose high on either side, stuffed with yearbooks, personnel files, and locked cabinets labeled by decade.
She searched under 1980–2000, her phone light flickering across cracked folders.
MARTINS, A.
Her fingers stopped.
She pulled it out.
Inside: a faded student photo. Handsome. Smiling. Early 2000s uniform.
> Adeolu Martins.
Graduated: 2002
Role: Founder of the Literary Society.
Expelled: 2003.
Reason: Redacted.
Redacted?
There were black bars across most of the page. But one line was still clear:
> "Reinstated under undisclosed capacity by special board vote, 2016."
Her chest tightened. 2016 — the year before Sade enrolled.
He was never a teacher.
He was a ghost in the walls.
Still in the system. Still pulling strings.
---
🗝️ A Hidden Page
She flipped to the back of the file.
One thin sheet was folded between the lining.
It was handwritten. Ink faded. Edges burned.
> You don't survive this place by being loud.
You survive by knowing where the shadows bleed.
Ade never left. He became the shadow.
— S
Sharon stood frozen in the dark, cold now not from the room, but from the realization.
Whoever Sade had feared…
was still here.
---
🔄 Zuri Starts Asking Questions
Back in the courtyard the next day, Zuri pulled Sharon aside.
"I saw Nora talking to Ikenna this morning. They looked scared."
"They should be," Sharon replied flatly.
Zuri exhaled. "Sharon… you're not telling me everything."
"No one tells anyone everything."
Zuri's face changed.
"I went into the old library records. There's no record of Sade ever being in Literary Club. But I found a photo — and she's right there. Sitting beside Bianca. And Reina."
Sharon blinked.
"Reina was in it too?"
Zuri nodded. "And then? She vanished from club records after that semester."
---
👤 Reina Appears Again
Sharon didn't have to look far.
Reina found her — this time by the cracked fountain on the west path.
She handed Sharon a folded paper.
Sharon opened it carefully.
It was a page torn from Sade's journal.
Not the one she had. Not the one Sharon had read cover to cover.
This page… was darker.
More desperate.
> Reina said not to write it down.
Said even paper bleeds when you press too hard.
But I have to. I have to remember.
I know what Ade did.
I know who he made disappear before me.
And if I vanish — they'll say I broke.
But Reina will remember. She promised.
Sharon looked up. "Why are you giving this to me now?"
Reina didn't answer the question.
She simply said:
> "Bianca is afraid of him too. But fear makes people cruel. Not brave."
Then she walked away.
---
📌 End of Chapter Thirteen
> The page was shaking in Sharon's hands.
Not from wind.
From something deeper. Something buried for too long.
---
🔜 Coming in Chapter Fourteen: The Ones Who Were Silenced
Sharon confronts Bianca again — and hears something she never expected.
Zuri is threatened… anonymously.
Reina finally admits why she stayed silent all this time — and reveals that someone else tried to expose the Circle before Sade.
Their name? Scratched out. Forgotten. Until now.