Semua Bab CHAOS COLLEGE : Bab 31 - Bab 40

The warehouse was dead silent. Only the echo of Lila’s breathing filled the darkness, each inhale sharp, each exhale trembling. The dust still hung in the air like smoke from a war long over. Sparks flickered across the concrete where the clash had ended moments ago, their light reflecting in her eyes—eyes that no longer looked fully human. Red lightning still pulsed faintly through her veins. Harper was quiet. Too quiet. Lila wiped a streak of blood from her lip, her hands trembling. Cade stood a few feet away, leaning on a twisted steel beam, his chest heaving. His shirt was ripped, blood staining his side. Adrian crouched beside him, eyes dark with exhaustion but still locked on her—as if afraid that if he blinked, she might vanish into the dark again. “Is it… over?” Adrian asked, his voice hoarse. Lila shook her head slowly. “No. Whatever that was… it wasn’t the end. It was the warning.” Before she could explain, the cloaked figure appeared again—this time, closer.

The campus had never been this quiet.It was two in the morning, and the usual hum of late-night chatter and music from the dorms had vanished. Every window was dark. Every door sealed. Only the sound of distant sirens cut through the silence.Lila sat on her dorm bed, knees pulled to her chest, staring at the cracked mirror across the room. It had been that way since she woke up—one long fracture running through the glass, like a scar splitting her reflection in half.The reflection on the left was her: pale, tired, trembling.The reflection on the right… smiled when she didn’t.She hadn’t slept since she woke from the Veil.She wasn’t sure she could.Cade had tried to reach her earlier, but campus security had initiated lockdown—an “energy disturbance” had caused multiple electrical failures across the city. The faculty claimed it was a solar flare. Lila knew better.Harper’s voice drifted through her mind, calm and amused.Solar flare. How poetic. They have no idea the sun they’re

The air over campus had changed.It tasted like metal and electricity, the same flavor that lingered right before lightning hit.Every light flickered in unison—classrooms, dorm halls, even the vending machines—pulsing to a heartbeat that wasn’t human.Cade limped beside Lila through the science quad. “The Council’s strike team is coming,” he said quietly. “They think you’re the epicenter.”“I am,” Lila admitted. Her voice was low, steady. “But not the one they should fear.”She looked at the glass façade of the library.Her reflection blinked—out of sync—then smiled a second too late.A soft cracking sound spread across the glass, spider-webbing outward until her mirrored twin stepped free, dripping shards that evaporated before they touched the ground.The duplicate tilted its head. “You can’t destroy me. You made me.”The Fractured War BeginsCade raised his weapon, but Lila stopped him. “No. If she’s here, others will follow.”All around them, the campus mirrors rippled like water

The first sensation was cold. Not the kind of cold that bites skin or freezes lungs, but a cold that seeped into bones, into memory, into the very fabric of existence.Lila’s eyes snapped open, though she had no idea how long she had been unconscious. The air hummed, thick and heavy, like static trapped in a jar. She sat up—or thought she did—but the ground beneath her felt liquid, shifting like quicksilver with every movement.For a heartbeat, she panicked. She could see the campus below—but only as a distorted reflection, buildings stretching and bending unnaturally, shadows running along the walls like ink in water. The sky was fractured, shards of light glimmering like broken mirrors scattered across a black expanse.She was not in the real world.The Veil.Her heartbeat stuttered as memories from the tower’s fall rushed back—Cade clutching the mirror shard, the explosion, the shards falling into ash. And then herself… falling.Her hand reached instinctively for her pocket, search

The campus no longer belonged to the living.Buildings flickered like half-formed holograms, their brick and mortar folding in on themselves as shards of the Veil crept into reality. Windows reflected not the sky but endless corridors of mirrors, and the grass shimmered with a metallic hue, alive, as if it were breathing.Students ran through the streets, some screaming, some frozen in terror. Shadows lengthened unnaturally, bending around corners, chasing forms that weren’t there.And in the center of it all stood Lila.Her hands glowed faint red, veins of energy crawling up her arms. The duplicate—taller, crueler, violet eyes glittering with malice—hovered nearby, merging the Veil and reality wherever it stepped.“You can’t stop me,” the duplicate hissed. “Every choice you made brought me here. I am inevitable.”Lila’s pulse raced. “You’re wrong. I choose. And I choose life.”Cade’s WarningCade appeared at her side, golden eyes flickering with residual Veil energy. “They’re here,”