Chapter XX: Envelop
Morning returned in the gray hush London was famous for. The Thames crawled sluggishly outside the windows of the lecture halls, its surface smeared with rain like liquid lead. The campus of King's College stirred back to life after a week of cancellations, students flooding through the corridors with books in hand, laughter ringing in courtyards, coffee cups steaming in the crisp air.
To Nathaniel Cross, it was another battlefield.
The scar under his shirt still pulsed faintly, a low ember rather than the inferno of last night. He clutched his satchel strap with one hand, the other buried deep in his coat pocket, knuckles whitening around his phone.
It had taken everything in him to step outside that morning. His flat felt more like a trap each day—walls crawling with unseen whispers, notebooks filling with words not his own. But King's... King's was supposed to be normal. A sanctuary of concrete schedules and engineering lectures, where the only things that broke were circuits and bridges on paper.
He prayed that was still true.
The main lobby of the Strand campus swirled with chatter. Students crowded the noticeboards, checking timetables, swapping gossip about suspended classes. Some griped about exams being rescheduled. Others celebrated unexpected holidays stretched too thin.
Nathaniel drifted among them like a ghost, eyes scanning faces without recognition. His closest mates, Theo and James, were nowhere in sight. Good. He didn't trust his voice not to crack if he had to fake normality.
Posters for student societies lined the walls, their edges curling: fencing, chess, debate. But one new flyer stopped Nathaniel cold.
A plain sheet of paper, printed in stark black font:
"They Knock Twice."
No society name. No explanation. Just those three words.
His scar throbbed in response.
Nathaniel's breath caught. He tore the flyer down with shaking hands, crumpling it into his pocket before anyone could notice. The noise of the crowd swelled around him again, but it felt distant, warped, as if he were underwater.
"Coincidence," he muttered, forcing himself toward the lecture hall. "Just coincidence."
But the walls of King's seemed to listen.
Professor Calder's voice was a steady metronome, droning across the hall as equations sprawled across the whiteboard. Circuits, loads, structural tolerances—engineering, Nathaniel's second language.
Normally, the lines of calculation anchored him. He could bury himself in the logic, numbers as precise as gears in a watch. Today, the chalk blurred. Every stroke seemed to twist, forming not equations but symbols he had seen before—jagged spirals, static-born glyphs.
Nathaniel blinked hard, gripping his pen until it nearly snapped. The chalkboard cleared. Equations again. Rational, human.
But his notebook betrayed him.
Where he thought he had copied the formulas, the page filled itself with the same alien script, letters crawling like insects across the paper. His own hand trembled above the ink.
He slammed the notebook shut.
A few students turned at the noise. Theo, sitting two rows behind, frowned at him, mouthed something like "You alright, mate?"
Nathaniel forced a nod, though sweat clung to his hairline.
He didn't dare open the notebook again.
After lecture, Nathaniel fled into the corridor, its high windows dripping with rain. Students streamed past him, laughing, talking, alive in a way he felt incapable of being.
But halfway down the hall—silence.
Not complete. His shoes still clicked on tile. But the voices vanished. The shuffling feet. The laughter. All gone, as if the world had been muted.
Nathaniel froze. The corridor stretched long before him, too long. The far end blurred into haze. Every door lining the hall was shut, glass panels opaque.
And then—
Knock. Knock.
Two sharp raps from behind one of the doors.
His scar blazed.
Nathaniel's heart hammered, the sound echoing down the empty corridor. He took a step back. His reflection in the window glass stared back at him—but its mouth was moving.
"Open it."
The words came from his reflection, not his throat.
Nathaniel spun, pressing his back to the wall. The corridor swam around him, shadows bending unnaturally. Every door now bore a black mark, faint symbols etched into the wood.
Another knock. Two raps. This time, from every door at once.
The sound rolled through him like thunder.
He ran.
The library should have been safe. Its vast silence, the smell of paper and ink, the weight of a thousand books—orderly, human. Nathaniel collapsed into a chair by the far wall, head in his hands, chest heaving.
Students whispered at distant tables, unconcerned. Normal. Reality still existed here.
But when Nathaniel opened his satchel, he found the flyer again.
Not crumpled. Not torn.
Flat. Perfect.
"They Knock Twice."
And below it—new words, written in handwriting he didn't recognize:
"Next, they open."
Nathaniel shoved it deep into the satchel, forcing the zipper closed.
Hours blurred. He moved from class to class, though he remembered none of the content. Every face seemed a stranger. Even Theo's jokes slid past him like static, his friend's laughter distorted in his ears.
By late afternoon, the rain had thickened into a curtain, students hurrying across the quad beneath umbrellas. Nathaniel joined the crowd, shoulders hunched, head down.
And then it happened.
The sea of bodies froze.
Mid-stride. Mid-laughter. Umbrellas suspended mid-swing. The rain itself hung in the air, droplets glittering like glass beads.
Nathaniel stumbled to a halt. The entire world had stopped.
Except him.
And the figure.
It stood at the far edge of the quad. Tall. Faceless. The same that had crawled from his television, but sharper now, its outline more solid against the storm.
It raised its hand.
The frozen students all turned their heads toward Nathaniel in unison. Hundreds of eyes. Hundreds of unmoving bodies.
And then—
Knock. Knock.
The sound came from every chest, every skull, every frozen body in the quad.
Nathaniel screamed.
When the world lurched back into motion, he was on the ground. Students gasped, rushing to help him up, their voices real again.
"You alright, mate?"
"Should we call someone?"
"He looks pale as death—"
Nathaniel shoved them away, staggering upright. His scar throbbed, his vision swimming.
He didn't answer. Couldn't. He pushed through the crowd, ignoring their protests, running blindly toward the edge of campus.
The rain soaked him through, cold and heavy, but it couldn't wash away the truth.
The entity had followed him.
King's College was no longer safe.
Back in his flat that night, Nathaniel peeled off his soaked coat and collapsed onto the couch. His body trembled with exhaustion, but sleep was impossible.
His notebook lay open on the desk again. He hadn't touched it since morning.
New words sprawled across the page, written in the same alien hand:
"THE CAMPUS IS OURS."
"YOU CANNOT RUN."
"YOU ARE THE BRIDGE."
Nathaniel's breath hitched. He slammed the notebook shut, but the words seared into his mind, echoing with every pulse of the scar.
The knocking would return.
He knew it now.
Not just at his door.
Everywhere.