The school’s front doors loomed tall. They were double glass panels framed in cold aluminum, scuffed with years of fingerprints and faint shoe scuffs near the base. Faded decals clung to the inside of the panes: a cracked “Welcome!” sign, peeling mascot stickers of a little cartoonish goblin, and a sun-bleached poster about safety drills. The handles were thick metal bars, scratched and worn, polished in spots where countless hands had pushed their way in.

  Even when closed, the glass gave the illusion of openness, a false transparency into a darkened lobby beyond. Where the dungeon core had its donation pedestal. In the right light, the glass reflected more than it revealed. Creating warped images of the parking lot, of the sky, of whoever stood just outside, waiting.

  On quiet days, they looked like any set of institutional doors. On darker ones, they looked like they were holding something back.

  Milo slammed these doors behind him, it was a darker day, and he staggered forward, clutching his ribs. His breath came in short, ragged gasps, clouding in the musty air. Behind him, through the glass doors, the woods and bus loop were silent again. No crashing, no howls, no Windigo-Moms. He was safe.

  For now.

  Milo staggered as he slowly walked forward, hand pressed to his side, breath ragged. “Damn it, Rigal,” he muttered, voice barely above a whisper. “You always had to be the brave one, huh?” He laughed: short, bitter. “You were right, we should have ran straight out like it was just an elk. Now, a death trap.” His boots slid slightly on the chalk-slick floor, but he didn’t stop. “You screamed. Just... tore you apart like paper. And I ran. I left you.” His throat tightened. “I’m sorry, brother. I’m so sorry.” He clenched his fists. “But I’ll make it out. One of us has to. You will get reborn and I’ll be there. I swear.”

  The hallway stretched before him like a forgotten throat, long and narrow and dust-choked. The air tasted like stale paper and old erasers, dry enough to crack his tongue. Milo paused beneath the flickering ceiling panels, eyes wide with wonder. The long tubes above him buzzed and hummed, casting pale, ghostly light that danced across the ruined hallway.

  “What kind of spell is this…?” he whispered, breath catching. “No fire, no crystal glow… just light, floating in the air.” One of the lights sputtered and went out with a snap, and Milo flinched, gripping his bow. He glanced around, half-expecting a mage to step out from the shadows. “They enchanted the roof themselves,” he murmured, a strange reverence creeping into his voice. “This place... it was powerful once.”

  Fluorescent lights above buzzed faintly, some stuttering with sickly pulses of greenish light while others hung dead in their sockets, casting long, twitching shadows across the floor.

  Crayons, or coloured wax from Milo’s point of view, had melted into the tiled floor in warped rainbows. It created sickly veins of colour baked into the ground by some terrible heat. Broken desks leaned against the walls like barricades left behind in panic. Most had been shattered, legs twisted, wooden tops gouged by something sharp. A child’s backpack sat limp and half-burned near a cubby, its once-bright cartoon print long faded.

  White smears streaked across the floor, trailing into the dark like drag marks. They looked like chalk. Milo stepped cautiously, his boots crunching on crumbled plaster and broken crayons. He took another breath, shallower this time. It was too quiet. And every part of his gut told him that silence wasn’t safe. It was a trap.

  Milo stumbled forward, one arm the other tracing the chipped wall beside him. “Rigal was right,” he muttered, voice barely louder than breath. “Should’ve turned back... should’ve listened.”

  The hallway stretched ahead like a hive of ghosts, hexagonal and wrong, built by something that remembered schools but not quite how they worked. The walls bled faded posters and dusty crayon scribbles, warped by time and heat. Chairs lay overturned. A torn backpack dangled from a bent coat hook, its straps stiff with age. The air reeked of dry chalk, old mold, and something else—like scorched sugar and rot.

  Milo’s boots crunched over broken pencils like bright fossils. He stopped beneath one of the strange glowing tubes, the light jittering as if unsure it wanted to stay lit. “Magic,” he whispered, trying to believe it. “Or... some kind of holy light.” He looked up, eyes wide. “Maybe this place has mana. Maybe it can protect me.”

  His voice broke on the last word. It sounded too loud, even in a whisper. The silence here wasn’t empty.

  Milo shook his head. “No more running,” he said, more to convince himself than anything else. “I’ll find a place to rest. Rigal... you’d want me to live, right?” He swallowed hard, blinking back the burn. “I’ll make it count.”

  Milo walked, his breath catching in his throat. The flickering light above him spasmed once; then held steady just long enough to reveal them. Small handprints. Dozens of them. Smeared along the walls in erratic swirls and finger-dragged trails, tiny palms pressed flat in dried, flaking red. The sizes were unmistakable; too small to be adult. Kids. Children.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  He staggered back a step, heart hammering. “No, no. What is this place?” he whispered, eyes wide, searching the hall like it might answer. But it only stared back, silent and cruel.

  The handprints weren’t just painted. Some looked fresh, still damp, still glistening at the edges. One even dripped. Milo turned in a slow circle, panic blooming sharp in his chest. “Rigal, why didn’t I listen to you?” His voice cracked, echoing too loud, bouncing down the corridor like a thrown rock.

  From somewhere deeper in the hall, something moved.

  A soft hiss.

  A powdery scrape across the tile.

  Milo froze, blood draining from his face.

  He wasn't alone. And whatever was coming… It had very small hands.

  He turned the corner: higgling. High-pitched. Wrong. Like playground laughter twisted into something sharp. Then they came. Four Chalklings, scuttling low from cubbies, bags and broken vents like spiders made of chalk and memory. Their limbs moved on jerky angles, too fast, too silent; until they hit the tile, and the squeak of dust and friction filled the air.

  Milo had only a second to take them in. Stick-thin humanoids, shaped from haunted chalk dust and fractured memory. Their faces scribbled, constantly redrawn by invisible hands; one frame at a time. No eyes. Just smears. Ink-like distortions that twitched with every sound.

  They moved in perfect sync. Trails of chalk dust followed behind them, floating like smoke from a dying fire. One tilted its head at him. Then the others followed. Listening.

  Milo’s breath caught in his throat, but it was too late. His voice, his panic, had already called them. He screamed, raw and wild, as the first one lunged. Then another. Claws like jagged slate dug into his chest.

  His cries echoed down the hallway. Outside the dungeon… no one heard him. Inside, the sound fed his attackers. They giggled again. And kept tearing.

  Milo's boots squeaked as he stumbled backward down the hallway, hand still pressed to his side, trying to staunch the bleeding. His pulse thudded in his ears—louder than it should have been. Every breath, every shuffle of his feet, felt like thunder in this silent, haunted place.

  He tried to fire his bow. He tried his knife. He tried his fists. He screamed. He cried. They. They just.. Continued to giggle.The sound came from everywhere. A hiss of chalk dust spilled from a broken classroom door, and then—

  System Notification: Chalkling Ability Triggered – [Smudge]: Visibility Obscured in Radius. Chalkling Ability Triggered – [Silence]: Sound-Based Spells and Detection Impaired.

  The hallway darkened; not with shadows, but with dust. It bloomed outward like a fog of powdered memory, stinging Milo’s eyes, blinding him in swirls of white. His blade was already in his hand, shaking, useless. Blood dripped over his hands. His blood dripped over his whole body from the dozen slashes. He was barely holding on.

  “I—I don’t want to die here,” Milo gasped, coughing on the chalk.

  One of the Chalklings zipped in low and raked across his calf with claws like splintered slate. Milo screamed and fell to one knee. That was all they needed. Another darted in from the side, pounced off a wall, and slammed into him with a wheezing giggle. Its claws slashed at his arms and chest—but never deep enough to kill.

  They were playing.

  Milo roared and lashed out, finally connecting. His blade passed through one like smoke. The Chalkling burst in a puff of dust, its body unraveling like eraser shavings in the wind.

  System Notification: Chalkling Destroyed – 15 experience claimed.

  But the three others shrieked, a horrible squealing like nails on a blackboard. Milo staggered. His ears rang.

  Then—

  *Chalkling Ability Triggered – [Screech Cascade]: Echo Damage Applied.

  Minor Internal Bleeding. Coordination Impaired.

  His dagger trembled in his grip. One hand went numb. Another Chalkling blurred past, scratching along his spine, and he howled in pain. Blood spattered the walls.

  Milo ran. No plan, just instinct. He never had a plan.

  The hallway bent the wrong way. Doors flickered open and shut. The Chalklings chased him, bounding off lockers and ceilings, drawing shapes in the dust as they moved, fractured spirals and lopsided playground games.

  He screamed for his brother.

  No answer.

  He turned, raising his dagger to swing again, only to find two of them hanging upside down from the ceiling above him. They dropped. One slashed his throat. Another plunged claws into his stomach. His voice broke into choked gasps, then faded entirely.

  System Notification: Adventurer Terminated. Body Assimilated into Dungeon Memory.

  System Notification:

  [Milo Has Been Expelled]

  Final Grade: F – Failure to Adapt.

  Please clean up your remains before leaving the premises.

  Note: Screaming is not an effective form of extra credit.

  And as the Chalklings fed on his last breath of sound, their giggles echoed again, bouncing down the hall like a child’s laugh at recess.