Chapter 1239: Story 1239: Vents of the Vanished
The vents hissed.
Not with air—but with whispers.
Harper ducked beneath the warped ceiling tile and hoisted herself into the ventilation shaft above the school library. Behind her, the moans of the Half-Dead grew distant. But the silence that replaced them was worse.
She crawled forward, knees scraping rust. The tal groaned under her weight, as if it, too, disapproved of her presence.
Then she heard it—scratching.
Not in front. Not behind.
Above.
Sothing was in the vents.
Harper froze. Her breath clouded the space in front of her, though the shaft shouldn’t have been cold. A sudden wind rushed past her from behind, carrying the faint scent of decay and dust.
Then ca the voices.
“Where did they all go?”
“She saw us.”
“She’ll vanish like the rest.”
Harper forced herself forward, hand over hand, ignoring the tremble in her fingers. She reached a junction. Left led toward the gym. Right, toward the science wing. The whispering echoed from both.
She chose the dark.
Right.
The vent narrowed, and with it, the light disappeared. Only the faint red glow of an ergency beacon far below illuminated slits in the tal, casting moving shadows that didn’t match her movents.
Then—she ca upon the first body.
A student, curled in the fetal position inside the shaft. Eyes wide open. No blood. No bite marks. Just… gone.
Skin pale. Mouth agape. As though they died mid-scream.
Harper pulled her jacket over her nose and pushed past.
Then another.
And another.
The Vanished.
The ones who never made it out.
Her knee knocked sothing hard. A cara. She picked it up. The battery was half-dead, but still lit. She clicked playback.
Footage.
A line of students crawling through the vents. Panicked. One turns the cara on herself. Tears in her eyes.
“They’re in the air,” she whispers. “Not the air ducts. The air itself. If you breathe too deep, they’ll find you. We stopped breathing. We still died.”
The footage ends with static. Then… whispers. Even through the device.
Harper turned it off.
A low growl echoed behind her.
She turned.
Eyes.
In the dark.
Not human.
She scrambled forward, heart pounding in her chest. The tal cut into her palms. Sothing clawed at her boot. She kicked, hit sothing soft, heard a scream that was not of this world.
A vent ahead was open.
She dove.
Landed hard in the empty science lab.
The lights flickered to life. She gasped.
The room was sealed.
Every window welded. Every door chained.
And written across the whiteboard in dried blood:
“THE VANISHED NEVER LEAVE.”
Behind her, the vent hissed once more.
The whispering had returned.
And they were closer now.
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