A balled-up sock hit Niles' square in the back of the head.
“Your side of the room is a biohazard, Niles. Organise your cables, won't you?” Leon grumbled from his newly assigned bed, the sting of his demotion still fresh.
Niles didn’t look up from the schematic he was sketching. “Complaining about the clutter. How very prefect of you, Leon. Some habits die hard.”
“You know, for a disgraced former prefect, you’re surprisingly quiet,” Niles continued, a hint of a smirk in his voice as he glanced back at Leon.
Leon, now free of the crutch, shot him a look. “Don’t start. Being your roommate is already a punishment.”
The words were sharp, but lacked their old bite. After being fired, Leon had been unceremoniously moved from the prefects' wing into Niles’ standard double, replacing his original roommate.
The first hour had been filled with a tense, wounded silence. The second hour, Niles had thrown a packet of crisps at his head and asked if his “legal expertise” could get them a better brand of potato.
The ice had broken.
“I’m... not a prefect anymore,” Leon spoke while keeping his head low. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “My father… he saw it as a way to restore our family’s honour after Lance's... death. Now I’ve just added another stain to the name.”
This time, Niles did look up, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “Think of it as an upgrade, Leon. You’ve been unshackled from the system’s bureaucracy. In the prefect wing, the probability of you being constantly monitored was greater than 92%. Here?” He gestured to the chaotic but private dorm room. “You’re a free agent. Your movements are less predictable. It’s a strategic advantage.”
A ghost of a smile touched Leon’s lips. Despite the mockery, there was a truth to it. For the first time since his brother’s death, he wasn't performing a role. The pressure to be the perfect legacy student was gone, replaced by the grim solidarity of being a fellow target. He was, ironically, in the most honest position of his life.
A soft knock came at the door. Alice opened the door and slipped inside, her expression sobering them instantly. “It’s time, boys.”
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Later that night, as the trio moved through the midnight halls, that new solidarity was their greatest asset. They were three shadows now, not two and a watchful prefect. Leon’s gait was almost back to normal, his movement fluid and silent.
“Niles is not wrong, you know,” Alice whispered as they paused at a corridor intersection. “About it being an advantage. You were trying to play by their rules. Now you don’t have to.”
“True, I must admit, it’s easier without the badge,” he replied in a whisper as they pressed into a doorway to avoid a patrol. He watched his former colleagues pass, their conversation a dull murmur.
There was no envy, only a cold clarity. Leon was on the right side of the shadows now.
They slipped into the library’s dark main hall. The vast space was cavernous, the moonlight illuminating dust motes dancing in the air like tiny ghosts.
They didn't hesitate, moving directly towards the Restricted Area. Stepping past it was like crossing a threshold into a colder, denser atmosphere. Niles pulled out Mr. Henderson’s note from his pocket, reading the clue again in the faint glow of his watch light.
“The First Headmaster’s folly rests where light fails and order dissolves.”
"Where light fails," Niles muttered, playing his own light along the shelves. "The deepest part. The very back."
He led his friends deeper into the maze, until the light from the main library was completely extinguished, and the orderly system of categorisation had indeed dissolved into a jumble of mismatched books and stacked folios.
In the farthest and darkest corner, where the wall felt damp and cold, was a single, low shelf. On it, lying flat and covered in a thick layer of dust, was a massive, leather-bound portfolio. There was no title on its cover, only a single, embossed symbol: a stylized eye with a keyhole for a pupil.
Niles carefully lifted it. It was heavy, the leather brittle. He laid it on the floor, and the three of them knelt around it, their hearts pounding.
This was it.
The First Headmaster's Folly.
As Niles opened the cover, the first page was not filled with text, but with an intricate, hand-drawn architectural diagram of Blackwood Collegiate.
But it wasn't the school they knew. This diagram showed countless underground tunnels beneath the academy, all centred around a massive, ovoid chamber labeled only with a single, chilling word:
The Heart.
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and then Add to home screen.