A voice spoke behind her.

“Lira.”

It was close enough to brush her ear—close enough to belong to a real mouth. But there was no warm breath, no shift in the fog, no scuff of shoes. Just sound, sharp and exact, like a pressed leaf.

She turned.

The trees above made a ceiling. Fog pressed in around her like walls. Between the trunks, nothing moved.

“Don’t follow it,” Callen said quietly. “That’s how it gets you.”

“It sounded like he was right—” She stopped before saying here. The word would make the emptiness real.

“He’s in the window,” Callen said. “But not this one.”

“Then which—”

Her phone buzzed faintly in her pocket, like it had been wrapped in cloth. She pulled it out. A message from Ezra:
Meet at gazebo. I’ve got something. Bring Callen.

The words Bring Callen slid into place inside her, like a book returning to its shelf.
She typed back: On our way.
The message sent slowly, like the whole town was thinking about it first.

They retraced their steps—over the low wall, across the empty lot where fog pooled like spilled milk. Twice, Lira looked back. Twice, she saw no one. But the feeling didn’t leave.

At the edge of campus, the gazebo hunched under bare branches like part of a spine. Ezra had spread papers across the bench, pinned by a thermos and a flashlight. In his hands was a leather-bound book, held like it might bite him.

“Tell me this isn’t bad,” he said.

“Start with the good news,” Lira replied. “Do you have any?”

Ezra hesitated. “I found… rules.”

“That’s the good news?” If Ryke had been there, he would’ve said it out loud. But Ryke wasn’t there, and his absence felt like a missing tooth in the sound around them.

Ezra opened the book carefully. The pages were brown and thick, the ink tight and deliberate. “Local journal,” he said. “Not in the library catalogue. I found it stuffed between old county records. It’s part history, part manual about the bell.”

He flipped to a page and read aloud:

“The fourth marked never dies where they are marked. The place that takes them is not the place that names them.”

Lira frowned. “So… if Ryke was marked in the cul-de-sac, he wouldn’t actually die there?”

Ezra shook his head. “That’s the tricky part. We don’t know where he was marked. All we saw was the metal strip with his name on it. That just tells us the bell claimed him. But this—” he tapped the page “—this says the spot where it claims you is never the spot where you die.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Lira asked.

Ezra didn’t answer. He turned another page with exaggerated care, as if the paper might shatter. “Here. This is worse. When the bell tolls, it bleeds reality. Think of the sound pushing through the world like water through cloth. Some places get thin. Those are the pockets—spaces that copy real streets but aren’t them. The journal calls them echo-places. They look right, but they’re off in tiny ways.”

“Like the cul-de-sac,” Lira said.

“Exactly. That cul-de-sac wasn’t the real one. The bell makes these places as traps. The lure is always sound—a voice calling, a chime you think you know. But the real doorway is hidden in the quiet between those sounds. That’s the hinge the door swings on.”

Lira remembered the voice in the culvert. “It didn’t have any breath,” she said slowly.

“Exactly,” Ezra said. “That missing breath was the hinge. You step through by chasing it. And once you’re inside, the bell doesn’t let you go unless it gets what it wants.”

“What does it want?”

Ezra’s eyes were flat. “Four names. Four deaths. It marks four people, then finishes the set. After that, it resets—like wiping a slate clean and waiting for the next chance.”

Lira swallowed. “And the metal strips?”

“They’re its ledger,” Ezra said. “The crows carry them. Each strip has a name stamped on it—a record of who’s marked. The bell treats them like debts. You can pass a debt to someone else—that’s why a strip can change names—but it never goes away. The bell still collects.”

“That’s…” Lira let the rest die in the air.

Ezra closed the book halfway, as if hiding the words might protect them. “One more thing. The bell loves clean patterns. If you answer a sound exactly—same rhythm, same tone—you’re agreeing with it. Agreement makes the connection stronger. That’s when it can pull you into a pocket.”

“And if you don’t match it?”

“Messy noise is harder for it to use. Noise is honest. Silence is the lie.” Ezra’s voice sharpened. “So if we answer wrong—just wrong enough—we might be able to hold the door open on our terms. Long enough to pull Ryke back.”