“She’s winding it up,” Mira said, her eyes wide. “The Dieselmine. It’s going to turn over the final cycle. If we don’t escape by the 13th chime… we don’t escape at all.”
She put one foot into the gap. And that’s when the 13th chime began.
They crept past the Trophy Room, where the awards were teeth. They held their breath outside the Headmistress’s study, where a long, skeletal finger tapped against the door from the inside. Tap. Tap. Tap.
She sat up on her thin mattress. Around her, in the dormitory’s gloom, twelve other girls did the same. But Chloe only counted eleven shadows.
It was not a bell. It was a scream of pure metal, a piston hammering against the inside of the world. The floor tilted. The pews became ribs. The stained-glass window of the saint shattered, and through it poured not light, but a thousand tiny ticking hands—clockwork insects that devoured shadows.
Tonight was different. Tonight was the Final .