All Chapters of OUR LITTLE SECRET : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The halls of Velgrave Academy were quiet now—too quiet. The aftermath of the Red Veil left the once-bustling elite institution suspended in an unnatural silence. Gone were the late-night duels and neon-lit parties that defined Bloodborn adolescence. In their place: cracked tiles, flickering lights, and memories half-erased by the chaos.Ophelia adjusted her gloves.Technically, it wasn’t her body. Not entirely. She still felt Lena’s heartbeat thumping behind her ribcage like a drum she didn’t control. The merge hadn’t gone as cleanly as Tobias promised. Their consciousnesses overlapped like watercolors on wet parchment—sometimes bleeding into each other, sometimes indistinguishable.She could still hear Lena in quiet moments. Not words. Not thoughts. More like… urges. Pauses. Instincts that didn’t belong to her.“You’re late,” Carl said, emerging from behind a shattered doorway, arms crossed over his chest. His dark hair was still damp from the rain outside, clinging to his forehead i

The entire school felt it.A ripple in the walls, a flicker in the lights. Velgrave’s massive digital infrastructure—normally silent and seamless—stuttered for exactly seven seconds. Long enough to send warning pings through every network. The holograms glitched, lights dimmed, and the Core-monitor heartbeat skipped.By the time the systems stabilized, something was already inside.In the main control chamber beneath the administration tower, Professor Vale slammed her palm onto the interface screen. “Trace the breach. I want location tags across all network sectors now.”Her assistant, Riven, paled as several monitors filled with rapidly shifting code. “It’s... not a breach. It’s an override.”Vale narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”Riven gulped. “Something from the Vault... it’s replicating in the system. But it’s not foreign code. It’s Mira. Her neural imprint has merged with the command functions.”“You’re telling me a student has taken over the school’s AI?”Riven nodded. “She’s not j

Standing outside the Vault for the first time in weeks—or months, depending on how you measured time inside a digital mind—she tilted her head toward the sky, letting the real sunlight warm her face. The chill in the air was different from the sterile hum of the servers she had made her home. It was alive.Carl hovered a step behind, arms crossed, eyes watching her every move like she might combust at any second. Tobias stood off to the side, fiddling nervously with his data-pad as he kept glancing up at Mira, like she might vanish again.Only Ophelia walked beside her without hesitation.“How are you feeling?” Ophelia asked softly.Mira’s lips twitched. “Like I forgot how to be human.”“You didn’t forget,” Ophelia replied. “You just got tired of being treated like one.”Mira’s gaze flicked toward the cluster of administrative drones gathering in the distance—dark uniforms, sleek weapons, and the cold clinical looks of people who didn’t see a girl… just a threat.“They’re not going to

The first real sign came during a mock training simulation.Students were testing their elemental abilities in the central arena—basic stuff: telekinetic lifts, flame projectiles, enhanced reflex combat.But when Taya Briar, a quiet second-year with hydrokinetic gifts, reached out to pull the moisture from the air, she froze.Because the water didn’t respond.Instead, it flowed upward—defying her will—and began to shape itself.A face. A shimmer. A whisper.Then: static.The simulation collapsed with a high-pitched shriek as the AI hosting the training feed crashed mid-run. For the first time in academy history, a training sim failed not because of student error—but because something else had hijacked it.“Did anyone else hear it?” Taya asked, trembling.Carl, Ophelia, Tobias, and Mira watched the footage later that night. It replayed slowly, enhanced and filtered. The moment the water disobeyed. The flickering static that bloomed across the arena like a virus. The faintest w

They were running out of time.The stolen schematics revealed everything—blueprints of Project Ascend, a now-defunct government-grade synthetic embodiment project once shelved for ethical reasons. But Callen had revived it. Not for science. Not for progress. But to house something unholy.The Phantom Mira.“She won’t wait much longer,” Tobias said, scanning the blueprint’s final phase. “The body’s 95% complete. All she needs is one more system override and a clean neural bridge.”“And Callen knows how to give it to her,” Carl muttered, pacing the room.Mira stood near the window, silent.Not afraid. Just... quiet.She could feel the phantom tightening her grasp on the system.It wasn’t just about corruption anymore.It was a countdown.“Can we destroy the vessel?” Ophelia asked.Tobias shook his head. “Not without alerting the system’s core AI. It’ll trigger an academy lockdown. And she’ll use that chaos to upload.”Mira finally spoke. “Then we beat her to it.”Carl turne