The door to yet another faculty room loomed before them. The metal handle felt cool under Luke’s fingers. It should have felt like just another step in their investigation, but something about this door, this room, felt different.

Hakari tapped her foot impatiently. “Come on, genius. You stole the key. Now use it.”

Luke shot her a look. “Borrowed.”

Sen snorted. “Right, because we’re totally planning on returning it after committing minor trespassing.”

Luke ignored him and inserted the key into the lock. It clicked softly, the sound oddly loud in the empty hallway. For a moment, none of them moved.

“Ready?” Luke asked.

“Not at all,” Sen replied, pushing the door open anyway.

The air inside was stale—thicker than the rest of the school, like a room that had been sealed away for far too long. And it was a mess. Papers littered the floor in torn, shredded strips. Filing cabinets had been forced open, their contents gutted. A monitor sat on a desk, its screen shattered, cracks webbing across the dark glass.

“Well, that’s not ominous at all,” Hakari muttered.

Yen hovered near the doorway, hesitant. “Someone… destroyed everything on purpose.”

Luke stepped carefully over the mess, kneeling beside the largest pile of shredded documents. He picked up a strip of paper, squinting at it. Most of the text was unreadable, reduced to meaningless fragments.

“Can you put them back together?” Hakari asked, peering over his shoulder.

Luke sighed, dropping the piece. “Even if I had every shred, it’d take hours. And that’s if whoever did this didn’t make sure the important parts were completely ruined.”

Sen whistled lowly. “Somebody really didn’t want people snooping around in here.”

Hakari wandered toward the broken monitor, running her fingers along the cracks. “Think they wiped the computers too?”

Luke stood, moving to the desk. The monitor was useless, but when he crouched down and reached under the table, his fingers brushed against something, a hard drive. His eyes narrowed. Carefully, he pulled it free. It was still attached to the tower, but someone had smashed the casing, exposing the drive inside.

“What do we have here?” Sen asked, watching Luke pry the drive loose.

“If we’re lucky?” Luke exhaled. “Something recoverable.”

“If we’re not?” Hakari asked.

Luke glanced at the broken monitor. “Then it’s a very expensive paperweight.”

Hakari crossed her arms. “So, what? We just hope it magically has all the answers?”

“I’ll have to analyze it later,” Luke said, slipping the drive into his bag. “If there’s anything left, I might be able to recover some data.”

Sen leaned against a cabinet. “So let me get this straight—someone cleared out the school, deleted all the files, shredded the paper copies, and just for good measure, smashed the monitors.”

“Looks like it,” Luke confirmed.

Sen exhaled, rubbing his face. “Okay, but why?”

“They wanted to erase everything about Project Eidolon,” Yen said quietly.

Hakari frowned. “Yeah, but wouldn’t they have taken the hard drives with them? Or burned the papers instead of just shredding them?”

The question lingered. Before anyone could answer, a sudden rush of cold air blew through the room.

Hakari shivered, rubbing her arms. “What the—?”

Yen turned sharply toward the door. “Did you—”

Luke glanced around, frowning. There were no open windows. No vents strong enough to cause that kind of draft.

Hakari groaned, throwing her hands up. “Okay, seriously—is this place haunted or not?!”

Sen opened his mouth, then paused, seeming to actually consider it.

Luke sighed. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

At that exact moment, something tapped behind them. It was faint. Almost too quiet to notice. But they all heard it.

Hakari’s eyes widened. “…No such thing, huh?”

Yen took a step back toward the door. “Maybe we should go.”

Luke hesitated, glancing back toward the shredded papers, the broken screen, the wreckage left behind. Someone had destroyed this place for a reason. But had they really erased everything?

He clenched his jaw. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”