L I R A

The sound doesn’t fade when the bell stops. It lingers, like metal humming under my skin.
When I blink, the world’s gone soft around the edges, books scattered, frost veining across the library floor. My hands won’t stop shaking. My throat burns with the taste of iron.

Callen’s on one knee, breath ragged. A thin blue light flickers under the sleeve of his jacket, pulsing with the same rhythm as the bell’s last toll.

Ezra sits rigid at the far table, eyes shadowed and furious. Noor’s lantern is a puddle of glass. Theo’s whispering apologies to the cracked window, voice breaking. The frost letters VESPER. DUE. still glow faintly through the glass.

“We did everything right,” Noor whispers, clutching her notebook like a shield. “We made it almost twenty-four hours”

“Almost wasn’t enough,” Ezra snaps. His voice is hoarse, but the edge still cuts. “The Rite failed. Someone has to pay.”

Something shifts in the corner. The choir twins Alma and Vio are huddled near the ruined chalk circle, faces ghost-pale. Alma’s fingers trace invisible notes in the air, shaking.

“It took her name,” Vio whispers. “The ledger moved.”

The world slows. “What?” I manage.

Alma holds up her phone. The cracked screen flickers with a photo of the ledger’s page the one we shouldn’t have opened. My stomach twists when I see the new lines of frost-ink scrawled at the bottom.

VIO SORELL – DUE.

No one speaks. The fog outside presses harder against the windows, listening.

Vio straightens, her voice suddenly calm in that too-empty way. “It picked wrong. It was supposed to take me.”

Alma grabs her shoulders. “Don’t..”

“I’m the eldest by three minutes. It’s always the eldest.” Vio’s smile cracks like thin ice. “I can fix it. I’ll mirror the call.”

Ezra moves closer. “You don’t even know what that means.”

“I do.” Her voice steadies. “A mirrored ritual. Two voices, one name reversed. One offers breath, one receives.” She glances at her twin, eyes shining with something fierce and final. “It’ll switch the debt.”

Noor’s shaking her head. “That’s not in any of the records. You don’t even know if..”

“I don’t care.”

The words ring too loud in the broken silence.

Callen pushes himself upright, gripping the edge of the table for balance. His sleeve rides up, and I see it again, the faint blue sheen under his skin, pulsing like trapped lightning. He doesn’t notice me staring. His eyes are on the twins. “If you try to cheat the ledger, it won’t just take one of you. It’ll take both.”

“We’re not asking permission,” Alma says softly.

And just like that, the twins are gone, slipping out through the hall before anyone can stop them.

Ezra swears under his breath. “We have to follow..”

I’m already moving.

The air outside the library feels colder, heavier. Each step down the hall crunches through frost. The school’s lights flicker with every heartbeat. By the time I reach the chapel, the fog is seeping through the doors like smoke.

Inside, the twins stand opposite each other, bare feet on cracked tiles, a circle of wax and salt between them. Frost candles burn blue instead of gold. Their voices braid together, soft at first, then splitting into harmony so precise it hurts.

“Don’t,” I whisper, stepping forward. The sound feels swallowed.

Alma glances back, tears freezing on her lashes. “If it takes her, it ends here. If it takes me, she keeps breathing.”

“Alma..”

The bell hums from nowhere.

It’s not tolling yet, just vibrating the air. The fog thickens, forming a ring around them. Their song strains higher, voices rising until glass cracks in the window frames. Vio falters mid-breath, coughing once, then twice, her body folding in pain. Frost blossoms along her throat like veins of ice.

“No,” Alma gasps. “Stay with me, stay..”

But the fog moves like it’s alive, pushing her back.

I ran forward.

Callen’s there first, bursting through the doorway, grabbing me before I can cross the salt line. His grip sears, warm where everything else is cold. “You can’t go in,” he says, low and certain.

“Then stop it!” I shout. “Do something!”

“I am.” His eyes flash silver-blue.

The fog screams.

It doesn’t sound like wind anymore. It howls, voices layered inside it, fragments of the same word echoing from every direction. Due. Due. Due.

Vio crumples mid-harmony. Her knees hit the floor, hands clutching her chest. Frost webs across her skin like veins bursting under glass. Alma screams and dives toward her, but the fog pushes her back, forcing the sisters apart.

“Vio!” Alma claws at nothing, nails scraping tile. “Take me instead!”

The bell answers.

A single toll, deep and alive, rattles the air. The candles gutter out. Blue light spills through the cracks in the chapel walls, thin lines that twist and converge in the center of the circle, right where I’m standing before Callen can stop me.

“Lira!”

Too late. The fog slams into me like a wall. It’s freezing, heavy, and intentional. The sound cuts through my ribs, into my heartbeat. I can’t breathe.

Then Callen moves.

He’s faster than the sound itself, hand catching my shoulder, yanking me back as the fog erupts into knives of ice. He takes the hit meant for me. The force throws us both down hard against the altar steps.

The smell of metal hits next, burning iron and ozone. Callen’s arm shields my face, the blue light around his forearm flaring so bright it’s blinding. For a heartbeat, it looks like the bell itself branded him, thin bands of molten light carving into his skin, forming a sigil that glows blue-steel bright.

The toll stops.

My ears ring in the silence that follows. My chest heaves. Alma’s sobs echo across the chapel. Vio’s body lies still, frost glittering where breath should fog.

“Callen?”

He doesn’t answer at first. His head’s bowed, breath shallow. When I touch his arm, he flinches. The mark glows brighter, tracing veins like circuitry, like the curse claimed him as collateral.

“Stop moving,” I whisper, voice shaking. “You’re burning.”

He laughs once rough, hollow. “Not burning. Binding.”

The word chills me worse than the fog.

Ezra bursts in through the side door with Noor behind him. His gaze finds the twins first, then me kneeling beside Callen, hands covered in blood and blue light. His expression curdles instantly.

“What did you do?” Ezra demands.

I shake my head. “It wasn’t..”

He rounds on Callen. “She’s not your fucking anchor!”

The words hit harder than the toll.

Callen finally looks up. His eyes, storm-gray and faintly luminous, meet Ezra’s with something like regret. “Tell that to the bell.”

The mark on his arm hums once, low and resonant, and every frost line in the chapel shivers in response. The light ripples outward tiny fractures of blue energy fading into nothing.

Ezra takes a step closer, fists trembling. “You don’t get to decide who she’s tied to.”

“Neither do you,” Callen says softly.

The silence that follows feels like it’s holding its breath. I press my shaking hand over the glowing mark, trying to slow it, to cool it. It thrums under my palm like a second heartbeat, his heartbeat.

“Let me help,” I whisper. “Please.”

Callen’s voice lowers, barely audible. “This bond isn’t protection, Lira. It’s a chain. I’ll pull you down with me.”

My throat tightens. I should let go, but I can’t. The glow under my hand thrums once, softer now like it’s syncing to my pulse.

The chapel is silent again. No toll. No wind. Just the soft hiss of melting frost.
Someone pulled the shattered candles together into one flickering cluster. Their light paints Callen’s skin in bronze and blue.

The twins are gone, Noor and Theo carried Alma to the infirmary, Vio still motionless under a sheet of silver frost. Ezra stays by the door, shadowed and unblinking, like he doesn’t trust what he’s seeing.

I kneel beside Callen. His sleeve is torn, blood pooling along the curve of his forearm where the mark burned through. The skin isn’t just wounded, it’s etched, lines of steel and light spiraling out from the bell-shaped scar at his wrist.

He tries to pull away when I touch him. “Don’t,” he murmurs, but his voice cracks halfway through.

“Too late,” I say, reaching for the first-aid kit Noor left behind. My fingers fumble the gauze. “You’re bleeding through everything.”

He doesn’t look at me. “It doesn’t stop. Not until the bond settles.”

The phrase hits like a pulse of heat. “Bond?”

He exhales, eyes fixed on the floor. “The bell marked me for what I did. For you.”

I freeze. “That’s not..”

“Lira.” He finally meets my eyes. “It chose. I didn’t.”

The air between us hums faintly. The glow on his arm softens as I press the cloth over it, my hands trembling. Every heartbeat feels like it echoes in both of us. His breath stutters when my thumb brushes his wrist, the mark flaring once before dimming again.

“Why do you keep doing this?” I whisper. “You act like you have to..”

He cuts me off, voice low, ruined. “Because I do.”

The words sink deep, cold and absolute. I should let go, but I can’t. The glow under my hand thrums once, softer now, like it’s syncing to my pulse.

Across the chapel, a sound breaks the stillness. Ezra.

He’s standing half in shadow, fists clenched, watching. The frost along the window catches the candlelight, crawling upward like veins until it curves into letters.

EZRA QUINN – DUE.

His name glows faintly blue, the same hue as Callen’s mark.

The bell doesn’t toll this time. It just hums, low, warning, alive.

And all three of us know it.