C A L L E N

The toll never finishes.
It swells, trembles and then dies mid-echo, as if the air itself swallowed the sound.

For a heartbeat, no one breathes.
Then the fog drops, slamming into the floor like spilled smoke, dragging the last whisper of her name with it. The stained glass stops rattling. The bell tower stands still.

Sister Margo falls to her knees, murmuring something I can’t hear.
Lira’s eyes find mine through the haze. She’s shaking. Not from fear, from the silence that follows.

The kind that feels like a curse taking its next breath.

The hardest sound to kill is breath.

We’ve been silent for two hours, and it already feels like the walls are learning our pulse. Every scrape of a chair, every cough swallowed too late, echoes like thunder in my head. The chalkboards are covered in rules Noor scrawled before the Rite began:
NO SPEECH. NO NAMES. NO SLIPS.
The last word smudged under her shaking hand, the chalk dust glittering like frost.

I sit near the back of the library, the same room where the ledger once pulsed under the floorboards. Lira’s across from me, her hair tied back, sleeves rolled to her elbows. Her fingers move over scraps of paper like it’s a new language, notes, sketches, glances. Her handwriting’s uneven, impatient. you okay? she wrote earlier. I didn’t answer. Just nodded.

Because if I start writing back, I’ll start looking at her longer than I should.

Ezra’s a few tables over, watching her like he’s cataloguing every breath she takes. He’s not looking at me, but he doesn’t have to. His jaw’s tight enough that the muscle twitches like it’s trying to escape his skin.

No one speaks. Even Theo’s crows perch outside the window, tilting their heads in uncanny quiet. The absence of sound is heavy,  not peace, but pressure. Like the bell is holding its breath with us.

I trace the scar on my palm,  the one the bell left the last time I tried to stop a toll. It pulses faintly, a heartbeat under skin. The silence amplifies it. The tether hums, restless.

Lira looks up. Our eyes meet. Just that,  one glance,  and the air between us hums. Her lips part, like she wants to whisper something, but she stops herself. She bites the inside of her cheek, writes fast: How long is left?

I hold up two fingers.
She exhales, fogging the glass. The word she doesn’t say is please.

The room stays still.
But the chalk on the board quivers, as if something unseen just brushed past it.

The quiet holds until the afternoon light slants gold through the library windows, catching on the chalk dust like snowfall.

Across the room, Ines drags a manicured nail through the chalkboard, tracing over Noor’s rules. Her eyes flick toward Ezra, she’s always playing to a crowd, even now. She grins, silent but smug, and curls a heart into the margin. Then she adds a word beneath it in loopy script:
Queen.

The sound isn’t even loud, a dry, delicate scrape, but it makes every muscle in me tense. Frost bleeds from the chalk mark, spiderwebbing out like veins.

Noor slams her notebook shut, mouthing stop with frantic eyes. Ines just blinks, confused, until the heart she drew splits down the middle and the word Queen smears itself into DUE.

Her mouth falls open. No sound.
The chalk drops from her hand, rolling in slow circles before stopping against my boot.

Lira’s eyes darted to mine. Panic flickers there, asking if this counts, if vanity breaks silence. I don’t answer. The Rite isn’t math; it’s intent. But intent bleeds.

Theo shifts near the window. One of his crows taps the glass, impatient. He shakes his head, mouthing no, but the bird keeps pecking a soft tink-tink-tink that echoes like a clock. Theo exhales through his nose, then whispers, almost soundless, “Hush.”

The moment the word leaves his lips, the air changes.

The fog outside thickens, crawling up the windowpanes as if it heard him. The crow flutters back, feathers catching frost that wasn’t there a second ago. The sound of his whisper lingers, thin, metallic before the silence snaps tight again, harsher than before.

Ezra scribbles something on his notepad, the pen digging hard enough to tear the paper. He pushes it toward Theo.
You just reset the clock.

Then another note, shorter, meant for me.
Keep her away from the windows.

I look over. Lira’s already standing, scanning the fog like she expects it to spell our names again. The reflection of the frost glows pale against her face, beautiful and wrong.

I want to tell her to sit, to stay close, to stop looking at things that might start looking back.
But the Rite demands silence.
And silence demands obedience.

The silence has weight now.
It’s not holding the curse back, it’s pressing on us, testing where we’ll crack first.

Noor’s lantern flickers once, then steadies. We’re running on borrowed hours. The frost on the walls hasn’t melted; it’s growing roots, curling into words I don’t dare read.

Lira moves toward a shelf, notebook in hand. She’s tracing one of the frost lines with a fingertip, curiosity winning over fear, when the ceiling groans. A soundless quake ripples through the room. Dust drifts down like gray snow.

My body moves before thought.
I catch her around the waist and drag her back just as a support beam splinters overhead. It crashes between us and the chalkboard where wood, plaster, and frost are bursting apart.

The shock knocks me to my knees. My right palm slices open against the broken edge, blood streaking the frost-white floor. The pain is instant, sharp, grounding. The silence magnifies it, a scream swallowed whole.

Lira’s eyes widened. She drops beside me, hands trembling.
She mouths, Callen, the shape of my name soundless but burning.

Don’t say it.
I shake my head once, gripping her wrist before she can. Blood runs down my arm, dark and vivid against her skin. Her breath shudders, she’s seconds from breaking the Rite.

I squeeze her hand, pressing our palms together to hide the wound. Her heartbeat flutters under my thumb, quick and terrified. I can feel the tether hum between us, that low resonance that always gives us away. It’s louder than words.

Ezra’s boots scrape behind us. He doesn’t speak, won’t.. but his presence is thunder. He crouches, rips a page from his notebook, and writes fast, furious strokes. The paper slides toward me, landing in the blood puddle.
Don’t die for her.

I meet his eyes. For once, there’s no calculation there, just warning, and something that almost looks like grief.

Lira snatches the note, crumples it, shoves it into her pocket like she can erase what it means. I want to tell her I won’t die, that it’s not that simple, that death doesn’t want me the way it wants everyone else.

But the silence demands we lie by omission.

A droplet of my blood hits the frost. It sizzles.
The floor hums once, low, hungry. The Rite is listening.

By the time midnight creeps in, even the candles look tired. Their wax drips like melted bones, pooling on the library tables. Everyone’s too afraid to sleep. Noor’s counting seconds on her watch. Theo’s crows have vanished into the fog outside, leaving only feather shadows pressed to the window.

Ezra sits rigid at the far table, jaw set, eyes shadowed. Lira’s next to him now, scribbling notes that have long since turned meaningless. Still here? Still breathing? Tiny reassurances written over and over until the ink starts to blur.

We’ve made it twenty-three hours. One left. Just one.

The quiet has become something alive, shifting between our heartbeats, waiting. Even our breath fogs slower, like the air’s too heavy to carry it. I can almost hear the bell’s pulse under the floorboards, faint, testing the edges of its cage.

Then the window fog ripples. Moves.

At first it looks like condensation, but the shape thickens, five distinct finger marks dragging downward on the glass. Theo notices first. He stands, stiff, eyes darting to Noor. She shakes her head, mouthing don’t.

But the marks on the glass start spelling.
Letters.
Then a word.

VESPER.

Lira freezes. The pen slips from her hand, clattering against the table. The noise feels like a gunshot.

The fog outside stirs, pushing at the glass like it wants in. One pane fractures with a faint cry, then the wind hits, cold and full of whispers. The word stretches, written again in frost: VESPER. DUE.

Theo panics first. “No..” he starts, the whisper barely a breath, but it’s enough.

The silence dies screaming.

The bell tolls, not from the tower, but from the air itself. The sound explodes through the room, rattling shelves, scattering papers. Lira clamps her hands over her ears, eyes wide. Noor’s lantern bursts, spraying blue sparks.

My tether flares like a live wire. Pain lances through my chest, dragging me half to my knees. Ezra’s beside her instantly, gripping her shoulders, but his face says it.. we failed.

Lira mouths my name again. This time, the bell answers.
One long, deafening toll.

The Rite is over.
Silence has been broken.