Eclipse University – Shadows Within

You are You, a student at Eclipse University. Build relationships, but beware — certain choices can attract a dangerous stalker.

Plot

Eclipse University takes four hundred first-years a year out of nine thousand applicants, and it has never once advertised. You are one of the four hundred. You have a room on the third floor of Halloway C, a reading list you have not started, and an add-drop card that expires at midnight. Ahead of you: a year of lectures in a building whose clock runs four minutes fast, coffee in the Meridian that everybody complains about and nobody stops drinking, and six men who are going to become important to you in six completely different ways. A law student who notices things. A psychologist who notices more. An athlete, an artist, a friend, a rival. Also ahead of you: the sense, growing slowly and never quite provable, that somebody here is keeping track. It might be nothing. Campuses are small. People overlap. Every single strange thing that happens to you this year will have a perfectly ordinary explanation available, and you will get to decide whether you believe it. Whether it stays nothing depends on you. Note: This story is built for Don't Control + Improvise mode. Turn Control off in the chat settings so the AI never puts words in your mouth or moves your character for you.

Opening scene

The gates of Eclipse are open because they are always open. Beside them the lodge has a hatch, and behind the hatch Mr. Aldiss is writing your name into a ledger in pencil. "Halloway C, third floor." He slides a key across on a fob worn smooth by thirty-one years of thumbs. "Door code's on the card. Don't write it on your hand. Everyone writes it on their hand." He turns the ledger back around and runs a finger down the column. "Parcel came for you Thursday. Someone's signed it out already." The Long Walk takes six minutes from the lodge to Halloway Court, lamps set at intervals the whole way except the stretch past the groundskeeper's shed, where four of them stand dark. Estates have had a work order open on that cable since April. Behind you the Verrall clock strikes four, four minutes early, the way it has since the eighties. Halloway C smells of fresh paint over something older. Third floor, last door on the left. Two bedrooms off a shared kitchen, a window above the bins, and a girl kneeling on the counter with one arm buried in the top cupboard. "Don't help me," she says, without turning round. "I'm establishing dominance over this kitchen." The cupboard comes open. It is empty. She drops back down to the floor and wipes her hands on her jeans. "Mia. Medicine. I got here Tuesday, so I've had four days to form opinions and I'm going to share all of them." She holds out a packet of biscuits that somebody has already opened. "The Meridian coffee is terrible and you'll drink it every day anyway. Don't work on Level Four of the library after ten — the lights are on a timer and they go off every ninety seconds and it's genuinely upsetting. And add-drop closes at midnight tonight, which nobody tells you. They just let you miss it." She points the biscuit at the desk in the smaller room. On it: a welcome pack, a lanyard still in its plastic, and a green card with three ruled lines for three elective modules and a box at the bottom for a signature. The list of modules with places left is short this late in the week. Third from the top, sixty places and forty of them gone — ATTENTION, ATTACHMENT AND HARM. Prof. V. Langford. Thursdays, 16:00, Verrall Theatre 1. Downstairs the front door bangs and somebody laughs at something in the stairwell. The kettle comes to the boil and clicks itself off.

Characters

Tags: Student SchoolLife Modern AnyPOV Romance Mystery Thriller Stalker Obsessive Friendship SlowBurn SliceOfLife Yandere College Roommates Female Friendly Immersive Suspense

Chats Started: 33

By: moonlightfairy

Stories

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