It’s one year after a fire broke out at Knoxmarion Occultic Academy. It’s a boarding school which teaches magic. It has recovered from the fire since, but the founder’s mausoleum is permanently closed, and some speculate it’ll be torn down. There are still violent protests over the murder trial regarding the fire. The school tower is still there. The journalist makes their way through the mob, with her phone, and hears chants seeking death onto the three Unok students she’s about to interview for her newspaper. She gets shown to their room, where she sits with them quietly, with notecards for questions she’s supposed to ask them. However, no one talks. She throws away the notecards. Later, the three Unok students find them and reach back out to the journalist. They tell their stories.

Long ago, the founder, wealthy in his own country, comes to the land to civilize the Unok people, who originate from the Southern United States. As such, he creates his academy, from Unok labor, and graduates of it work in the founder’s businesses. He likes parlor games and seeking revenge on those who beat him at them. Centuries pass, and the boarding school is accused of racism and inequality, which leads to admissions opening to other ethnicities. Diversity goes generally well, except for when the Unok students come.

One is a chess player who gets in from a chess scholarship, as well as good grades and countless recommendations. One is a mixed boy who gets in thanks to the privileges of his family. One is an athlete who gets in as reparation for his family’s implication in the building of the academy. They, and three other Unok students, are admitted. After their murder trial, their safety is greatly at risk, but the boarding school has dropped many of their charges, largely to focus on rebuilding. The journalist, now, hopes to tell their story to correct its falsehoods in the media.

Long ago, the founder builds a tower, atop which is his private study. He uses pulleys to navigate its floors. When the Unok students are admitted, they must live in the tower. However, the tower is a treacherous climb, and it causes them to be frequently delayed in their commutes. Everyone feels like they only stick together and form a clique. By the end of autumn term, one boy is found dead, after having suffered countless nightmares in which he saw a dead man. By winter, the temperatures are cold, and the tower has no wood for its fireplace, which causes them to suffer various harms. One boy dies from pneumonia. Later, the surviving students see a small fire burning in their fireplace.

Later, the Unok students take three items once belonging to the founder: a bell, a pair of glasses, and a shoehorn. They also get sulfur, a game box, a key to the mausoleum, and an official stamp of paper. Meanwhile, the mixed boy goes to the library to pull out numerous books, which have been documented in the murder trial, as regarding biographies of the founder and his gambling stories, as well as a scroll in Akkadian script, which is eventually revealed to be instructions for the game Hounds and Jackals. The boy’s translations of them, however, have yet to be recovered.

Soon, in the tower, the Unok students make a summoning circle, with candles, around the things of the founder they stole. The chess player then writes, on the official stamp of paper, that he bets his soul in exchange for the tower’s haunting to end. The paper bursts into flames. The game they play begins. The chess player starts winning, and the founder’s ghost starts to cheat. Right before he wins, the chess player throws a piece to the athlete, who leaves the tower with it, but the tower starts to burn up. Hearing the screams of his friends, he runs. All throughout the boarding school, buildings come alive, in haunting, and fire burns everywhere. The athlete runs to the mausoleum, and then there was a loud sound, after which the fire dissipates.

Afterward, many students report numerous injuries but no deaths. The athlete is buried under rubble in the mausoleum, and the chess player and mixed boy sneak out of the headmaster’s office, where they were called, in order to retrieve him. They are then taken by security, after which they are expelled and readied for prosecution for the charges of arson, grand larceny, unsanctioned exorcism, attempted kidnapping, forced labor, and attempted mass murder. However, all charges are dropped, as pursuing the case would implicate the boarding school in a slander of magic and the founder.

As of now, the mixed boy is attending another university, but the chess player and athlete are still here, barely protected by the violent protests. Thousands of Unok students have since applied to attend.