Th𝑒 𝓐 ccident on the phon𝑒.
The grand doors of the de Nile penthouse slammed shut with a concussive boom that vibrated through the ancient urns in the foyer. Nefera ripped her golden shawl from her shoulders and flung it blindly onto a velvet chaise lounge. Her chest was still heaving, her perfectly manicured claws twitching with an agitation she couldn't suppress. The lingering, maddening warmth between her legs had only fueled a furious, chaotic energy that she desperately needed to purge.
She marched straight into the lavish sitting room, where Cleo was reclining on an excessive pile of silk pillows.
"I am utterly surrounded by imbeciles, Cleo! Utterly!" Nefera exploded, pacing the length of the room like a caged panther.
Cleo blinked, her eyes widening as she held up a golden iCoffin. "Nefera, wait, I’m actually—"
"No, you will listen to me!" Nefera snarled, completely cutting her sister off, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. "I have never in my life encountered such unmitigated audacity! That pathetic, insufferable, bureaucratic zombie clerk actually had the nerve to look me in the eye and tell me my lineage doesn't alter her miserable spreadsheet columns! She stood there, adjusting those ridiculous cat-eye glasses, completely mocking everything we are!"
Cleo’s mouth dropped open. She desperately waved her free hand, pointing frantically at the glowing screen of her phone, but Nefera was far too deep into her volcanic tirade to notice.
"And then!" Nefera shouted, her face flushing a deep, furious gold as the memory washed over her. "Then, when I rightfully put her in her place, she had the absolute gall to call me a desperate phantom of the past! We were screaming, Cleo. Inches apart. I was so blinded by pure, unadulterated rage that before I could even process what I was doing, I grabbed her. I grabbed her by her stupid striped shirt and I kissed her!"
A sharp, collective gasp echoed in the room, but it didn't come from Cleo. Cleo looked like she had been struck by lightning, her arm freezing entirely in mid-air.
Nefera, completely blind to the world, pushed forward, her voice dropping into a breathless, frantic register. "And the worst part? It wasn't just a mistake. It was disgusting, frantic, and entirely un-royal, and we made out right against the student council desk! I had to pull myself away before I completely lost my mind. I threw her out, Cleo. I told her it never happened. But now I am standing here, my heart is hammering out of my ribs, and I am literally burning up because my body is reacting in ways I didn't even know it could to a *zombie*! I can still feel the damp heat between my legs, and I am utterly furious that I actually want her back in that room!"
Nefera finally stopped pacing. She took a deep, shuddering breath, smoothing down her tight bandages with trembling fingers, expecting her sister to offer some grand, comforting declaration of de Nile superiority.
Instead, the sitting room was dead silent.
Cleo slowly lowered the iCoffin from her ear, her face completely pale. She turned the phone around. The screen was glowing brightly, displaying a massive grid of active video-call participants.
Every single face on the screen was frozen in a state of absolute, unmitigated shock.
Deuce’s sunglasses were slipped halfway down his nose, his jaw practically hitting his skateboard. Draculaura’s hands were clamped over her mouth, her eyes as wide as saucers. Clawdeen and Clawd were staring blankly, their fangs showing in sheer disbelief, while Frankie’s neck bolts sparked with a sudden, erratic jolt of electricity. Lagoona and Gil were leaned so close to their respective cameras that their noses blurred, their eyes darting between Cleo and the background where Nefera stood.
For three agonizing seconds, nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
Then, Frankie’s voice cracked through the iCoffin speaker, loud and perfectly clear in the silent penthouse: *"Wait... Ghoulia?!"*
The voice from the tiny speaker broke the paralysis in the room like a crack of thunder.
Nefera stared at the glowing grid of faces on Cleo’s iCoffin, her royal composure entirely disintegrating. Her golden skin turned a pale, sickly shade of olive. The furious heat that had been pulsing through her body moments ago instantly froze into ice. For the first time in her life, the eldest de Nile daughter was completely speechless.
"Hang up," Nefera whispered, her voice dangerously low. "Cleo. Hang. It. Up."
Cleo’s thumb scrambled frantically across the glass screen, her manicured nails tapping wildly against the digital end-call button. "I'm trying! It's frozen! The signal is—"
*"Oh my ghoul, oh my ghoul, oh my ghoul!"* Draculaura’s voice erupted from the speaker, a high-pitched squeak of pure gossip adrenaline. *"Nefera and Ghoulia?! Like, actual making out?! On the student council desk?!"*
*"Yo, Deuce, tell me I didn't just hear that,"* Clawd barked, leaning so close to his phone that his furry brow filled the entire video frame. *"Did she say damp heat?!"*
*"Dude, I am literally blind right now, my snakes are tangling,"* Deuce stammered, frantically pushing his sunglasses back up his nose. *"Ghoulia? Our Ghoulia? The one who won't even talk unless it's a groan?"*
"Silence!" Nefera shrieked, finally finding her voice. She lunged across the silk pillows, snatching the iCoffin directly out of Cleo’s hands. She glared into the front-facing camera, her eyes blazing with an ancient, terrifying wrath. "If a single syllable of this utterly fabricated, delusional rant leaves this call, I will personally ensure that every single one of you is barred from every elite social circle from here to Scaris! Do you hear me?!"
*"Wait, but you just said—"* Frankie started, her neck bolts sparking again, but Nefera didn't let her finish. With a snarl of frustration, she threw the phone onto the marble floor and crushed it beneath the heavy golden heel of her shoe. The screen shattered into a web of dark glass, and the frantic voices of her sister’s friends were instantly cut short.
The sitting room fell into a heavy, suffocating quiet once more. Nefera stood over the ruined technology, her chest heaving, her hands shaking with a mixture of rage and profound humiliation.
Cleo slowly sat up from her pillows, staring at the pieces of her phone, then up at her older sister. "Nefera... you... you and Ghoulia? Really?"
"Not another word, Cleo," Nefera hissed, pointing a trembling claw at her sister. "Not. One. Word."
But the damage was already done. While Nefera had been screaming at the phone, she had completely forgotten about the modern conveniences of monster technology. Across the school district, in seven different bedrooms, the call had ended, but the group chats were already violently exploding with activity.
A mile away, in her quiet room, Ghoulia Yelps sat at her desk, trying desperately to re-calibrate her brain by organizing her comic book collection. Her lips still felt slightly numb, and her core still hummed with a confusing, lingering tension she couldn't compute.
Suddenly, her own iCoffin began to buzz on the desk. Then it buzzed again. And again. A relentless, rapid-fire succession of notifications began to flood her screen.
*Draculaura \[10:02 AM\]: GHOULIA!!! OMH ARE YOU OKAY?!*
*Clawdeen \[10:02 AM\]: Ghoulia answer your phone right now.*
*Frankie \[10:02 AM\]: We need to talk about the student council office. IMMEDIATELY.*
*Lagoona \[10:03 AM\]: Blue, holy smokes, did something happen with Nefera?!*
Ghoulia picked up the device, her analytical mind instantly switching into overdrive as she stared at the chaotic influx of messages. Her heart skipped a beat. She hadn't told a soul. She hadn't even processed it herself. How could they possibly know?
Her thumb hovered over the screen, a rare expression of sheer panic washing over her usually stoic zombie face.












