The principal's final scream tore through the hallway.
Kai jerked upright in his seat.
It wasn't loud—not at first—but there was something wrong about it. A sound that didn't belong in a school. It cut off too suddenly, as if the air itself had been ripped away.
The classroom froze.
"What was that?" someone whispered.
Kai's stomach dropped. His blood ran cold.
He knew that sound.
It was the same as Ani's.
Noah was already on his feet. "That came from the admin wing."
Before the teacher could stop them, the fire alarm blared—shrill and violent. Red lights flashed overhead. Chairs scraped back as the room erupted into chaos: panic, confusion, fear.
"Everyone stay seated!" the teacher shouted. "This could be a drill!"
But Kai knew drills didn't sound like screams.
He and Noah exchanged a single look.
Then they ran.
The hallway was madness. Students rushed in every direction, shouting, pushing, crying—oblivious to the true reason for the panic. Then it came again.
Another scream.
Kai and Noah ran toward the sound, forcing their way through the terrified crowd as students poured out of classrooms.
Kai saw it all in a single, frozen second.
The corridor outside the principal's office was unnaturally still.
Madeline—the secretary—lay sprawled near the doorway. At first glance, she looked unconscious. But the way her body was positioned, stiff and wrong, made Kai's chest tighten.
And the cold—
It hit him the moment he stepped closer.
Not air-conditioning cold.
Dead cold.
The office door stood half open.
Kai took another step forward—and something rolled against his foot.
He looked down.
His breath caught in his throat.
It was the principal's head, all dried and cracked, with his eyes still wide open in terror.
He staggered back, barely stopping himself from screaming.
He didn't know why he didn't run. Maybe part of him still needed proof. Maybe he needed to believe this was a nightmare.
Behind him, Noah clamped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide with horror. He reached for Kai's arm—
Strong hands grabbed them both and yanked them backward.
Police officers.
"What are you boys doing here?" a stern-looking officer snapped. A scar cut through his eyebrow, deepening his glare. "This is a crime scene. Move. Now."
"Everyone back!" another voice shouted. "Clear the area!"
Sirens wailed outside, growing louder.
Kai was pulled away, his heart hammering, his mind spiraling.
Because deep down, he knew—
This wasn't imagination.
And whatever had done this…
Was still out there.
Kai didn't remember deciding to run.
One second he was standing in the hallway—sirens screaming, teachers shouting orders no one followed—and the next, his feet were moving.
Fast.
Noah was right beside him, breath sharp, sneakers slapping against the polished floor as they cut down a side corridor away from the crowd.
"Where are we going?" Noah hissed.
"Anywhere but here," Kai said.
They ran like the shadow was coming for them too.
Then Kai felt it.
A presence—too close. Like smoke hovering just behind his ear, breathing softly.
He stopped short.
"Kai?" Noah called.
Kai turned, scanning the empty hallway, his heart pounding. Nothing. No one.
"What are you waiting for?" Noah asked, walking back and grabbing Kai's wrist. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing," Kai said. It was the only word he could manage.
They ran again.
He tried to tell himself it was paranoia. Stress. Fear.
But the feeling returned—stronger.
A whisper brushed his ear, thin and cold, like wind slipping through cracks in his skull.
The end is here. No one will escape it.
"Leave me alone!" Kai screamed.
His legs gave out. He collapsed hard onto the floor.
"Kai!" Noah rushed to him, dropping to his knees and shaking him frantically. "Kai, wake up!"
But Kai didn't move.
Not yet.
Kai's world dissolved into darkness—not the empty kind, but something thick and alive, like ink swirling through water. He floated within it, weightless. His body was gone. Only his mind remained, drifting through the void.
Then—
Fire.
Kai stood barefoot on cold stone beneath towering trees. He didn't know how he had arrived. He didn't know where there was.
The forest surrounded him, dense and ancient. In a mist-choked grove, willow branches creaked and swayed like whispering voices beneath a swollen blood moon. Torches circled a clearing, their flames flickering unnaturally, bending inward as though afraid of what lay at the center.
Hooded figures stood shoulder to shoulder, faces hidden, their low chant rising and falling in a rhythm that crawled beneath Kai's skin.
He tried to speak.
No sound came.
He felt detached—his mind present, his soul anchored here, while his body remained somewhere else. Waiting.
In the middle of the circle lay several motionless figures. Bodies. Alive, but unmoving.
Kai's breath caught.
A figure in crimson robes stepped forward. Unlike the others, his hood was lowered, revealing eyes sharp with belief and desperation. He knelt and placed a ring upon the stone—a gold band set with a cracked red gemstone.
Without hesitation, the man drew a blade across his palm.
Blood spilled onto the ring.
The chanting intensified.
The gemstone pulsed.
Smoke erupted from the crack, black and violent, twisting upward into a towering shape. Amber eyes ignited within the darkness, watching—aware.
The forest seemed to recoil.
The hooded figures cried out in unison, voices trembling with devotion.
"Accept our sacrifices," they chanted.
"Grant us the end's embrace."
"Make us eternal."
"Grant us the power to restore back the glory of the world"
"Clamima."
The shadow moved.
It flowed toward the bodies at the center of the circle, and as it passed over them, their breaths faded. Their forms shrank, life pulled away as if swallowed by the smoke itself.
Satisfied—if such a thing could be said—the entity turned.
It lunged for the man in crimson.
His scream cut through the forest before dissolving into silence.
Panic erupted. The chanting shattered. Figures stumbled backward, some falling to their knees, others fleeing into the trees.
But it was too late.
The smoke surged, feeding, growing heavier, darker—until the clearing was thick with it.
Then—
The vision fractured.
The forest tore apart like paper burned at the edges, and Kai felt himself being dragged backward, away from the blood moon, away from the chanting, away from the name that still echoed in his skull.
Clamima.