E Z R A

Mr. Voss doesn’t look at me when he slides the old brass key into the archive door. His fingers shake slightly, like he’s too aware this is treason.

“This door doesn’t open,” he mutters. “Not unless you’re legacy staff or cult-marked. Which I’m not. Anymore.”

The lock clicks. A whiff of chilled dust spills into the hallway like breath held too long. Lira stands behind me, hugging her arms. Callen lingers at the end of the corridor, not quite following, not quite staying behind. Watching.

“You have fifteen minutes,” Voss says. “Stack 17. Don’t touch anything that hums.”

Then he’s gone, already regretting whatever guilt made him slip the key into my locker this morning.

I push the door open.

The archive is colder than the rest of Hollowbrook. Not air-conditioned but old cold, stone and bone. The kind of cold that doesn’t come from temperature but from memory. Dust hangs in slants of light from barred windows, motes swirling like disturbed secrets. The shelves stretch higher than they should, iron-laced and coffin-quiet.

Mara’s camera whirs faintly, already up and scanning.

“Why is it always freezing in places like this?” Ryke mutters, rubbing his arms.

No one answers. We’re too busy being pulled forward, like the stacks are gravity.

I walk first, because I have to. Because Mr. Voss said “Stack 17,” and because the books here are the kind that weren’t meant to survive. Ledgers predating the bell pact. Yearbooks with entire classes crossed out. Town council records that don’t match the official histories.

Records of the lie we’re standing in.

One shelf down from the town’s original debt logs, I found it.

A slim registry bound in faded red leather, edges curled like it tried to rot itself out of memory. I recognize the style of old council census. The kind they made before the pact, before the toll became law.

I open a random page, then another. My fingers stop three columns in.

WRENLEY, MARAINE.
Student, class of ’95. Notes: Absent final semester. The family moved.
Status: CROSSED OUT with a clean, single strike through her photo.

But the frost ink underneath pulses once. Dim. Like a heartbeat under ice.

My breath catches.

My mother never talked about her maiden name. I only know it from paperwork but never stories. She calls Hollowbrook “that place,” and never with fondness. But this face? This girl in the grainy photo, caught mid-laugh at something outside the frame?

It’s her.

I run my finger just below the name. The frost ink stirs with faint tendrils curling like it wants to rewrite itself. But the glow fades as I touch it.

Not away. Just… dulled. Like it almost recognized me, then changed its mind.

I glance around. No one’s watching. Lira’s down the aisle, studying an unmarked ledger. Callen is standing beside her now, closer than necessary.

My pulse tightens.

I look back at the page, jaw clenched. The ink doesn’t react again.

I whispered her name once.

“Maraine.”

Nothing.

No pulse, no shift. The ghost-ink stays silent.

It saw me once. Then erased me too.

A soft thud breaks the silence.

I turn just in time to see Lira’s hand snap out for balance so that her fingers catch the edge of a shelf, then slip. Her knees buckle slightly, like the air thickened around her without warning.

Callen’s there before anyone else. Like he always is.

He steps in from the shadows between stacks, arms out, catching her elbow before she hits the floor. Not dramatic. Not even tight. Just enough. Like he knew exactly when to move, like the resonance pulled him in, too.

“You okay?” he murmurs.

Lira blinks, trying to steady her breath. “It’s the ledgers,” she says, voice thin. “They’re… loud.”

She presses her palm to her temple. I can see the strain in her shoulders, the same look she had the night the frost etched her name in the bus window.

Callen doesn’t let go right away.

She doesn’t pull away, either.

My hands curl at my sides.

“They’re humming,” she says quietly, as if that’s normal. “Not sound. Pressure. It’s like standing inside a song that doesn’t want to be heard.”

I move toward them, slow. Controlled. My voice stays even. “Then step back. You’re too close to the resonance spike.”

Callen glances at me. Just once. No expression. He lowers his hand a second later, letting Lira find her footing again.

“I’m fine,” she says, avoiding both our eyes.

But I saw the way she leaned into him before she remembered not to.

I don’t say anything.

Not when Callen’s hand brushes Lira’s sleeve as he steps back. Not when her breath steadies in time with his.

Not even when she finally looks at me and looks away faster.

I could say something. About boundaries. About resonance and exposure risk. About how being near the ledgers in this condition is dangerous for her body, her brain, her tether to the ledger.

But I don’t.

Because none of that would be the truth, and I don’t lie well.

The truth is: I saw the way she leaned into him. And I hate how natural it looked.

So I stay silent.

And the silence feels heavier than if I’d screamed.

Instead, I turn back to the registry and snap it shut with too much force. The echo claps through the stacks like a gunshot. No one flinches but me.

I breathe in through my nose.

Control is still control, even if it feels like swallowing glass.

Behind me, Callen says nothing. Of course he doesn’t. He never has to. His presence is always enough. He hovers like a fault line, and people treat him like he’s gravity. Like he’s inevitable.

I was the one who started this archive search. Who followed the patterns. Who connected the census gaps and yearbook erasures and missing council files.

But it’s always him standing next to her when the curse gets close.

And she never pulls away.

I found the next book by accident.

It’s misfiled and half-jammed sideways between two encyclopedias on Hollowbrook’s founding myths. The leather binding is cracked and curling at the edges, but the spine is intact. No title. No seal. Just a circle burned into the front, too faint to see unless the light hits it just right.

When I lift it, frost creeps along my gloves. I shouldn’t be surprised anymore. But this frost is different, it doesn’t bloom outward. It coils inward, toward the center seam, like the book is trying to freeze itself shut.

I opened it.

The moment the spine gives, the floor hums beneath my feet.

And then the sigil appears.

Not drawn. Not carved.

Burned.

The stone tiles under us hiss like they’ve been struck by lightning. Lines flash out in a ring with no ink, just heat. A circle surrounded by jagged edges that almost look like letters, like someone tried to write a name but forgot the alphabet halfway through.

Mara’s camera clicks once. Then again, faster.

The sigil flares blue-white. Then… gone.

Nothing but scorch marks that start to fade even as we stare at them.

“What the hell was that?” Ryke whispers. He’s halfway behind a shelf now, face pale.

Callen steps closer to the marks. “It wasn’t meant for him,” he says, low.

“Me?” I ask.

Callen doesn’t answer.

I look down at the book still open in my hands. Its pages are blank.

But the cover is smoking.

Mara doesn’t say anything at first. Just keeps fiddling with her camera’s side panel, face tight.

Then she mutters, “Wait. That last shot, before the flare there is something’s wrong with it.”

She crouches by the nearest table and flips her camera’s screen toward us, scrubbing backward through the glitchy footage. Frost lines fuzz the edges, static smearing across each frame like ink dragged under glass.

The moment the sigil burns in, the image fractures.

Then it clears. For one perfect second.

“Pause it,” I say, stepping closer.

She freezes the frame.

In the snapshot, we’re all visible. Lira. Callen. Me, still holding the book. And someone else.

A boy standing in the far corner of the stacks, behind the fogged shelving. Faint outline, blurred face. But not unrecognizable.

I know that face.

We all do.

“Is that..?” Ryke starts.

Lira says it for him. “Theo Park.”

“But… he’s gone,” Mara whispers. “He disappeared last semester. No one’s seen him since detention week. They said he transferred.”

“That’s not a transfer,” Callen says quietly, his eyes on the screen. “That’s an echo.”

“No,” I say. “That’s a person. That’s him.”

The camera screen flickers.

The image distorts.

And then the face turns but not toward the lens.

Toward us.

Eyes sharp. A knowing half-smile.

Like he sees us watching.

Then the screen cuts to black.