Alpha Luna Diary: My Personal Obsession

CHAPTER 16: The Secret Beneath Crescent High

Dear Diary — okay, today I officially stopped being an ordinary girl. I keep trying to write that sentence in a way that doesn’t sound insane, but there isn’t one.

For seventeen years I thought I knew my own life, and it turns out everyone around me has been sitting on some version of my story that nobody bothered to hand me a copy of.

I’m literally the only person in my own life who doesn’t know how it starts. Cool. Great. Love that for me.

The courtyard was dead silent after everything happened, and not in a peaceful way — more like the whole world was holding its breath. The wind just stopped, like even the academy itself was too scared to move.

Hundreds of students were standing around looking shell-shocked, and I could see it on their faces, that flicker of “there’s no way that just happened” fighting with the part of them that had literally just watched it happen.

The teachers were already herding people inside, clearly getting ready to blame it on a gas leak or some nonsense, and honestly I almost envied them for getting to pretend. I didn’t get that option anymore. Whatever line I’d crossed, there was no walking back over it.

Jack came over and picked up my diary like it might still bite someone. He brushed the dust off super carefully, walked over, and handed it back to me like he was returning something breakable.

“This belongs with you,” he said, and his voice was so much softer than I expected. “Whatever it’s hiding, you don’t have to deal with it by yourself.”

I looked down at the cover I’ve had since I was a kid, my thumb automatically finding the worn spot on the corner, and told him, kind of quietly, that I used to write everything in there — every dumb crush, every bad day, all of it.

It was supposed to be the one place where my life actually made sense to me. Now even that felt like it belonged to someone else.

Something shifted in his expression, and he just said, “Then we’ll figure it out together. One page at a time.” And weirdly? I believed him.

That’s when Arthur walked up, and for the first time since I’ve known him, all that stiff authority he always carries around seemed to slip a little, like there was something heavier underneath it he’d been holding back for a long time. His eyes went straight to the diary and just stayed there.

“That book has kept its silence for seventeen years,” he said, quiet enough that I had to actually lean in. “If it’s decided to start talking now, then time made a choice none of us were brave enough to make ourselves.”

I basically snapped back — not proud of it, but I was so done with the riddles at that point. “What decision? Please, just stop talking around it.

Everyone keeps bringing up ‘seventeen years ago’ like it’s supposed to mean something to me. It doesn’t. Nobody has ever actually told me what happened.”

He closed his eyes for a second like he was bracing himself, then said, “There was a night when peace died,” and honestly the way he said it gave me chills.

Max shot his dad this look — not confused, more like scared — and said, “Father. Not here.” Arthur nodded, slow, like he was setting something down he’d been carrying too long.

“You’re right,” he said, glancing back at me, almost apologetic. “There are ears here that were never meant to hear this.”

Gabriel stepped up next, brushing debris off his jacket, way calmer than I think he actually felt. “Then we take this somewhere safer,” he said. “Whether our families like it or not, Marionette deserves the truth.”

Jack immediately tensed up. “You don’t get to make that call for her.” And Gabriel just looked at me, completely serious for once, and said, “I’m not trying to. I’m trying to give her the one thing neither of our families has bothered to — a choice.” That word just kind of sat there between all of us.

And honestly, for the first time, I didn’t see Gabriel as just the guy who asks me out every single morning like it’s some game to him.

I saw someone who’s just as trapped by his family name as Jack is — two guys handed totally different roles in the same inherited mess, and neither of them ever got a say in it either.

“I’ll decide where I go,” I said, and it came out way steadier than I actually felt. Nobody said anything for a second.

“I’ve spent my whole life letting other people decide what I’m allowed to know,” I told them, gripping the diary tighter. “That’s done. If there’s a truth about my own life out there, I want all of it. Even the parts that hurt.” Especially those parts, honestly, though I didn’t say that bit out loud.

Arthur just looked at me for a long moment, like he was seeing something else entirely, and finally said, “You have her spirit.” “Whose?” I asked, and my heart actually skipped.

He opened his mouth to answer — and that’s exactly when a security guard came sprinting across the courtyard yelling for the principal, completely out of breath. “Sir, we found something. Beneath the west wing.”

Arthur’s whole demeanor changed instantly. “What do you mean?” The guard could barely get it out: “The explosion — part of the old foundation collapsed. It opened some kind of passage. Under the school.”

I caught the way everyone around me traded glances way too fast, that specific look people get when an old scary story turns out to be true. “So it’s still there,” Arthur murmured, mostly to himself.

Jack turned to him. “What’s still there?” Arthur didn’t answer right away — he just stared off toward the west wing where the emergency crews were already swarming — and when he finally spoke, his voice sounded far away.

“Before Crescent High was ever built, this land belonged to the first Briggs territory.” My stomach dropped. “There are ruins under the school?”

“Not ordinary ruins,” he said, even quieter now, and something about the way he said it made my arms prickle. “Older than the Briggs line. Older than the Sterlings too.”

That’s when I felt it — the diary warming up in my hands, not hot, just alive, like it was waking up from a really long nap. It trembled slightly, and before I could even react, it flipped open on its own to somewhere near the middle.

No glowing gold light this time, just a map, hand-drawn, edges soft with age, with one spot circled in something that looked like dried blood. Jack leaned in first. “That’s—” and Arthur’s eyes went wide. “The Sanctuary.”

Max was staring at it like it might vanish if he blinked. “I thought that was destroyed.” Arthur shook his head slowly, looked right at me, and said, “It’s been waiting." Beat. ”For you.”

And then the ground just — lurched. Not a little shake, a full-body lurch, like the earth had been holding its breath way too long and finally let it out. People started screaming, cracks split across the stone under our feet.

This low groaning sound rose up from somewhere way underground, like a door the size of a mountain finally creaking open after centuries. Dust everywhere. And on the map, that crimson circle started glowing, faint at first, then steadier.

Words started bleeding up through it like ink rising through water: *The first key lies beneath Crescent High. But beware — not everyone seeking the truth intends to protect it.*

Meanwhile, way down below the school, in some chamber that had been sitting in the dark longer than anyone alive could remember, a pair of ancient blue eyes opened. And a voice, low and old, moved through the stone like it had been carved out of it. “So…the Luna has finally returned.”