"What kind of person answers to a name like that?" Alex muttered under his breath, nudging his friend, Adam, with his elbow.
Adam smirked. "You mean Mister Sabastin?" he whispered back, deliberately drawing out the name like a sinister spell.
Mr. Sabastin was not the kind of teacher students at Whitmoor College looked forward to. He was the chemistry master, though many whispered he had no business teaching at all. His face was pale and thin, his cheekbones sharp like broken glass, and his eyes were always rimmed red as if he hadn't slept in years. Some swore he'd once been involved in a secret research project—something that went terribly wrong—and was hidden away in Whitmoor as a favour or punishment.
But the students loved rumours, and in Whitmoor, rumours often grew teeth.
Alex adjusted his glasses as Sabastin's voice echoed across the dim classroom. The lights above flickered slightly. No one seemed surprised.
"Nature," Sabastin croaked, "is not your friend. Reactions are not meant to be kind. They are designed... to change."
He paused dramatically, eyes sweeping across the room like a hawk eyeing prey. "The proper mixture, the correct sequence, and what you create—could alter everything."
Behind him, the blackboard was already covered in chalk scrawlings—chemical symbols, frantic arrows, looping diagrams that made little sense even to the best students.
Alex sat straight, alert. This was his world. Equations, reactions, chemical bonds—he understood it all, and more. He had a quiet obsession with the unexplained, especially when it intersected with science.
His friend, Adam, slouched next to him—tall, built like a rugby player, his grey eyes already glazing over. Chemistry wasn't his thing. Football, girls, a bit of banter—those were his arenas. Math and science? Not so much.
Still, they were inseparable.
They'd been friends since Whitmoor Junior High, their bond cemented after Alex's father mysteriously died during a school field trip in the nearby woods. The body was never found. The case went cold. But Alex never truly let it go.
A hissing noise broke the classroom's fragile silence.
Sabastin stepped back from the lab table, where beakers hissed and steamed. Something green bubbled in one of the flasks.
"Observe," he said, raising a pale hand. "This is the Crawley Reaction. Named after a researcher who believed the veil between matter and spirit could be broken through chemistry."
Someone in the back snorted.
Another student—Dean Miller, a loud-mouthed joker—laughed out loud. "Creepy ghost science? Come on!"
That was when the explosion happened.
BOOM!
Glass shattered. Smoke spiralled toward the ceiling. A flash of green and orange fire flared across the table, nearly setting a stack of papers alight.
Students ducked. Some screamed. Dean fell off his stool.
Then came a slow, deep, guttural laugh. It wasn't Sabastin. It wasn't anyone in the class. It echoed like it came from inside the walls themselves.
The smoke cleared. Mr. Sabastin stood still, not a speck of soot on his black coat. He frowned deeply, his lips twisting in distaste.
"You fools," he spat, stepping toward the cowering students. "You don't understand the importance of these chemicals. You think they're toys. You think this is all for grades? I don't blame you. I blame your parents."
The class fell silent.
"Fed on cheap food and poisoned with video games. Soft. Cowardly. You've chosen ignorance over truth. You don't want to learn—you want comfort. I pity your entire generation."
He let out a hiss—yes, a hiss—like steam escaping a vent, then turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.
Silence reigned.
Alex, however, was smiling.
"That was insane," Adam said, brushing broken glass off his jumper.
"I loved it," Alex replied, eyes still fixed on the notes Sabastin had scrawled on the board. "There's something here, something he's not telling us."
"Or maybe he's just a lunatic with a chemistry set," Adam replied.
Alex chuckled. "Let's find out."
The hallway outside the classroom felt colder than usual. The lights flickered here too. A few students whispered and darted past, still shaken by the explosion.
"Are we seriously doing this?" Adam asked as Alex led him toward the old library wing—an area supposedly locked after a fire years ago.
Alex didn't answer.
Sabastin had mentioned the Crawley Reaction. Alex had heard the name before. Not in science textbooks, but in one of his father's old journals—notes scribbled during research trips, entries about experiments abandoned due to "unethical consequences." There had been a diagram that looked eerily like what Sabastin had drawn on the board.
They reached the door at the end of the corridor. Faded wood, scratched like it had been clawed. The doorknob was rusted.
Alex pulled out a bobby pin. "Help me keep watch."
Adam rolled his eyes. "Where did you even learn how to pick locks?"
"Reddit."
"Fair."
The lock clicked.
Inside, the room was shrouded in darkness. Dust particles floated through slanted rays of light from a broken window. Old lab equipment sat forgotten on rotting shelves. Vials, test tubes, even journals—some still open—were strewn about, untouched for years.
But at the centre of the room was something else.
A door.
No, not quite a door. More like a vault. Iron, bolted shut, and etched with chemical formulas and—yes—symbols that didn't belong to science.
Adam stepped back. "Mate, this is where I draw the line."
Alex stepped closer.
The vault seemed to breathe.
And just for a second, a whisper licked across Alex's ear.
"Welcome back… Alex."