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The first rule of Briar Hollow Academy was simple: If the third-floor bell rings at 3:17 a.m., do not open your door. Everyone thought it was a joke. Until the night it rang for me. I had only been at Briar Hollow for three weeks when the nightmares started. The school sat alone in a stretch of forest so dense it swallowed the moonlight. From the outside, it looked like any prestigious boarding school—ivy clinging to brick walls, tall arched windows, a clock tower that hadn’t worked in decad