L I R A

The hallway becomes a stampede—shouting, shoving, bodies slamming shoulder to shoulder as eight hundred students try to escape something they don’t understand. My ears are ringing, but beneath all of that chaos I hear it again. That metallic click. Sharp. Precise. Like it’s calling my name.

Ezra drags me through the hall with one hand locked around my wrist. “Don’t look back, Lira. Just move.” His voice is steady but too tight around the edges, like he’s trying to hold himself together for my sake.

I try to keep up, but the cold from the strip hasn’t left me. It clings to my skin, crawls up my spine. Every time someone bumps into me, the frost memory spikes again, like the metal strip is still pressed against my bones.

Someone whispers my name, so close it’s almost in my ear. I spin, but it’s only Callen pushing through the panicked crowd, his hood low, his expression unreadable. He isn’t rushing like everyone else. He moves like he already knows exactly where he needs to be.

The lights flicker. A few people scream. The air temperature drops again. The click echoes one more time, sharper now. Ezra presses a hand between my shoulder blades. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”  But I don’t think that’s true.

He pulls me against the wall, blocking the chaos with his body. His voice lowers into that calm, careful council-president tone that usually fixes everything. “What you saw could be a temperature shift. Condensation. A prank, even. We don’t jump to conclusions.”

I stare at him. “My name vanished, Ezra.”

His throat works. “Metal can corrode, or maybe the engraving..”

“It didn’t corrode.” My voice comes out thin. “It erased itself.”

He goes quiet for one painful beat. Then he cups my elbow, grounding me, warm but not warm enough, like the heat isn’t sinking into my skin. “You’re scared,” he says. “That’s all this is.”

I nod, even though something in me knows that’s not true. The fear isn’t the strange part. The strange part is that my first instinct wasn’t Ezra’s comfort. It was Callen’s don’t. A shadow steps in beside us. Callen. Close enough that I feel the air shift with him.

Ezra’s whole posture tightens. “What do you want?”

Callen doesn’t answer. His eyes move across the ceiling tiles like something is crawling inside them, something only he can hear. His breathing is uneven like he ran here, but the hallway chaos never touched him.

“Do you hear it?” I ask, before my brain can stop my mouth.

Ezra frowns. “Hear what?” Callen’s gaze snaps to mine, and that hum, low, electric starts beneath my skin again. Like my bones remember something they shouldn’t.

“The warning,” he says. Ezra scoffs, but the sound is thin. “There is no warning. No curse. Something triggered the AC..”

Callen shakes his head once. Slow. “Then what do you think started in there?”

The lights flicker again. I don’t want the answer. Ezra grabs my hand and pulls me down the hallway, straight past the library. Right when we pass the doorway, the strip in his hand jolts. Actually jolts. Like someone yanked it.

Ezra freezes. “What..”

The strip pulses, soft red glow under black metal, like a heartbeat trying to push through. Frost cracks across the tile floor from the library threshold, thin white veins crawling straight for the strip. Straight for me. My breath snags.

Callen steps forward, slow and tense. “Don’t go in,” he says, eyes locked on the strip. “It’s reacting.”

“To what?” Ezra snaps, but even he sounds unsure. Callen doesn’t answer at first. He watches the frost veining toward my shoe, inch by inch.

Then, quietly: “Her.” Ezra immediately shifts, trying to shield me with his body. “Lira isn’t causing anything.”

The strip pulses harder. And somewhere behind the library doors, the metallic click answers him, closer now. Hungry. The click sounds again and something hooks under my ribs, tugging me toward the dark. It’s not a choice. It’s like gravity changed direction and I’m the only one who feels it.

“Lira, don’t,” Ezra warns.

But I’m already taking a step. Callen doesn’t stop me. He just watches like he always knew I’d go. The library lights are off. Not dim. Off. As if the room was severed from the school’s power. The air drops twenty degrees when I cross the threshold. And the click falls silent. Waiting for me.

Frost climbs the bookshelves in branching veins. The silence is so thick it presses against my ears. In the middle of the room sits a massive iron-bound book on an oak table. The ledger.

Frost-ink veins crawl across the cover like something inside is trying to escape. I don’t want to get closer. But I do. My feet move before I think. The page is open. Names fill the parchment, some bold, some faint, some scratched over so violently the fibers tear. And then one name near the bottom twitches.

The ink ripples like breath trapped under skin. I gasp. Ezra curses behind me. Callen goes still. The name flickers, dims, and then vanishes. Clean. Perfect. Like it never existed. The ledger hums once, low and hungry. And the frost on the page shifts toward me.

“Lira, back up.” Ezra steps in front of me, grabs my hand, tries to pull me away. His palm is warm. But the warmth doesn’t reach me. It hovers on my skin like it’s afraid to sink in.

“You shouldn’t be near this thing,” he says. “It’s reacting to temperature patterns. Or.. or something else. But it isn’t you.”

Except the frost veins shift again when I move, curling toward me like vines. Ezra tightens his grip. Too tight. Like he thinks he can anchor me by force. But all I feel is the cold from the page. And a space between us where warmth should be.

The ledger shudders, a tiny scrape against wood. I stumble back and Callen reaches out to steady the table. His fingers brush the back of my hand.

A quick, accidental touch. But my whole body lights up. A hum fires through my skin, sharp and electric, like the room recognizes us—him, me, whatever this is and reacts. The kind of feeling you remember even after it’s gone. Callen jerks his hand back. Not fast enough to hide the look in his eyes. Ezra sees it. His jaw tightens.

“What was that?” he demands.

Callen says nothing. He looks at me like the truth terrifies him. And God help me, I can still feel where his fingers touched me. My skin remembers him.

Ezra positions himself directly between us. “She needs distance from all of this. We’re leaving.”

Callen doesn’t move. “She’s the reason it reacted. Taking her out won’t change anything.”

“You don’t know anything about her.”

Callen lifts his eyes. “I know enough.”

Ezra turns to me. “Lira, don’t listen. He’s guessing.”

Callen: “You heard it before anyone else. That isn’t a coincidence.”

Ezra: “You’re scaring her.”

Callen: “She should be scared.”

The ledger hums, louder, vibrating the table. Ezra grabs my shoulder. Callen steps forward. The space between all three of us feels like a wire pulled too tight. A cold gust sweeps the table. The ledger flips pages on its own, slow and deliberate. It stops on a half-filled sheet. Frost curls around the margins like claw marks.

Then I see it.

My name.  VESPER, LIRA.  Faint. Washed out. Like someone tried to erase me and stopped halfway.

“What..” The word dies in my throat.

The ink trembles. Rises. Climbs the page like invisible fingers pulling it upward. Ezra swears. Callen’s breath stutters. My name lifts.  Lifts  and fades. Not gone. Not erased like on the strip.  But left behind as a ghost-ink outline. An echo of me. Then frost shifts beneath it. Letters form, slow and deliberate:

LISTEN.

The metallic click echoes from somewhere deep in the stacks. And the ledger hums like it’s whispering my name back to me.