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Chapter 1 - Title: Whispers in the West Wing

They say she still sings at midnight.

Soft. Broken. Just beneath the window of Dorm Room 7.

The seniors dared each other to listen once. Only Lara did. She didn't come back the same.

I was there when she screamed.

I'm Remi Adegoke—sixteen, curious, and too smart for my own good. I've spent three long years at Saint Briella's Academy for Girls, tucked away in the crumbling hills of Oyo's forgotten suburb. It used to be a colonial mission school, or so they say. The kind where secrets seep through the stone like rainwater.

The kind where ghosts linger.

The teachers don't talk about the disappearances.

Or the three girls who hung themselves in the West Wing in 1982.

Or the boy from the neighboring school whose body was found floating in the lake—his mouth stuffed with brambles.

No.

Instead, they teach us to curtsey and say our prayers.

But I've always listened deeper.

And lately, the walls have been talking again.

It started with the cold. Even in the thick, humid air of February, Dorm Room 7 grew icy by night. A thin mist curled beneath the doors. Then came the whispering. Faint. Repeating the same names.

"Tiwa... Amaka... Yejide..."

Names that don't exist on our student registry anymore.

Then one of the girls vanished. Bisi. Always humming, always neat. Her bed was made. Her locker untouched. But her slippers were soaked in lake water, the soles lined with black feathers.

The school told us she ran away.

But I found her journal hidden beneath a loose floorboard in the chapel.

And what she wrote chilled me:

"I saw them again by the old library. They called my name.

The ones who never left."

I should have burned it.

I should have shut my eyes and prayed like the rest.

But something—some deep, burning need—won't let me stop.

I know this place is lying to us.

And I swear on everything I've got left, I'll uncover the truth about Saint Briella's. Even if it means speaking to the dead myself.

Because last night… I heard my name whispered too.

And this time, they were standing at my window.

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