L I R A

The lights in the archive hallway still flicker when Ezra finds us. He looks like he’s been scraped hollow, eyes too wide, breath uneven, but he won’t say why. Only that we need to keep digging. Noor sets the cracked blueprint tube on the table between us, and for a second I swear it hums in tune with whatever’s breaking inside him.

Noor slides on gloves before prying the rusted cap loose. The paper inside sighs as it unrolls, edges feathered with mildew, ink faded to gray. It smells like metal and rain and something older than either.

Across the table, Mara lifts her camera, its lens still half-blinded from the last frost burst. “Founders’ schematics,” she murmurs. “Town layout, pre-bell tower.”

Ezra steadies the corner with one hand. His fingers tremble, just barely. “Look at the notes. Same architect as the original school grounds.”

My stomach twists. The blueprints map Hollowbrook as it once was, streets ending where new ones shouldn’t, empty squares labeled Recovered Ground. At the center, a blank space where the bell tower stands now, except the original plans show nothing there.

No structure. No tower. Just a penciled annotation: Added following the disappearance event.

Noor squints, tapping a faded margin. “Wait. What’s that?”

The blueprint’s edge curls, revealing a smaller diagram beneath, inked in a darker shade. A circle of twelve names, each joined by thin lines like spokes. In the middle, barely visible, one word shimmers through the dust.

I brush my thumb over it. The ink warms under my skin, frost bleeding outward from the touch.

VESPER.

The word breathes once, ghost-ink brightening as if recognizing me.

My heartbeat slams. “That’s my name,” I whisper.

“No,” Ezra says too fast, voice brittle. “It’s your family name. Could be symbolic.”

But the air around the paper vibrates, low and steady, like the blueprint itself disagrees.

The lines around the circle begin to pulse faintly. Frost threads out from each name, veins connecting toward the center, toward Vesper. I back up a step, but the resonance follows, the same hum that crawls under my ribs every time the bell stirs.

Mara’s camera flickers, catching the glow. “The ink’s reacting to her,” she whispers. “Not heat, but frequency.”

Noor swears softly. “Resonance field. It’s reading her pulse.”

Ezra presses his palm to the table, eyes narrowing. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s Hollowbrook,” Noor says. “Impossible’s normal.”

The hum deepens. For a heartbeat the paper looks alive, breathing in the same rhythm as me. The frost veins throb once, then still.

Ezra pulls the blueprint closer, scanning the ring of names. “These aren’t random. The order, look.. each surname matches families tied to disappearance reports, oldest debts first.” He swallows hard. “The circle’s not ceremonial. It’s bookkeeping.”

“Bookkeeping?” I echo.

“Debt tracking,” he says, quieter now. “The tower wasn’t built for the school. It was built to collect.”

The color drains from his face; his focus wavers, eyes unfocused like the ink’s turning to static. His blind spot. The bell’s tone seeps through even when no one else hears it.

“Ezra?” I reach for him.

He shakes his head, forcing a breath. “I can’t see it right. It’s..” He cuts off, blinking fast. “The pattern’s shifting.”

The frost flares once more, like it senses his hesitation, and the hum spikes to a single, thin note of bell-metal.

The hum shifts again before the door opens. I feel it first, pressure in my ribs, like the air exhaled through bell metal. Then Callen steps out of the shadows between the archive shelves.

He doesn’t speak. Just stands there, hood down for once, frost glinting in his hair like he walked through a storm no one else could see. The light catches the faint burn of the bond mark along his forearm, glowing like old steel.

Ezra straightens immediately, instinct pulling him between us. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I didn’t come for you,” Callen says, quiet enough that it shouldn’t carry, but it does. His eyes find mine. “The blueprints were calling.”

My throat goes dry. “You mean the resonance.”

“I mean you,” he says.

The blueprint paper flutters even though there’s no wind. The hum evens into a rhythm that matches my heartbeat, and my knees almost buckle. Callen moves before I fall, catching my wrist, not tight, just steady. His palm is rough, pulse hot against mine.

The frost veining the blueprint stills, as if soothed.

Ezra’s voice sharpens. “Let her go.”

Callen does, instantly, but the moment lingers in the air, visible like breath in winter. The paper exhales a faint mist. It sounds like relief.

I force the words out. “You knew.”

Callen’s gaze flickers to the blueprint, then back to me. “I knew it wasn’t random.”

“That my name, my family was part of this?” My voice cracks. “You could’ve said something.”

He hesitates, jaw flexing. “Would you have believed me?”

“Try me,” I snapped.

He looks down at the frost still shimmering along the lines. “Belief makes it stronger,” he says finally. “The bell hears what you believe.”

Ezra exhales hard, a scoff cut short. “You expect us to buy that? That thought alone powers a centuries-old curse?”

Callen meets his stare. “You’ve seen it react to her doubt. To your silence. You know it’s true.”

Noor murmurs, “He’s right. Resonance amplifies with intention. It’s physics, not faith.”

Ezra shakes his head, pacing a short line. “Physics doesn’t rewrite names in frost.”

“Then stop looking for the wrong kind of science,” Callen says, low. “You can’t reason with a bell that feeds on conviction.”

The words settle between them like static, sharp enough to cut. I stand there, caught between logic and whatever Callen is.. my pulse answering both, traitorous.

Ezra moves closer to the table, his shoulder brushing mine. “Don’t listen to him, Lira. He talks in riddles because he doesn’t have proof.”

Callen’s eyes flicker with something like hurt or warning. “Proof is what gets people killed.”

“Enough.” My voice comes out smaller than I want. The frost veins twitch at the sound. I step back, trying to breathe evenly, but the resonance keeps syncing to my panic. The air tastes metallic, humming against my teeth.

Callen takes one step closer, not enough to touch, just enough to ground me in the vibration. “Breathe with it,” he murmurs. “Not against it.”

I do, and the hum smooths. The frost stills again. For one impossible second, the room goes quiet.

Ezra’s voice cuts through it, soft and bitter. “Of course it listens to you.”

He’s still standing close, but I can feel the distance between us more than the heat. Logic against faith. Pattern against pulse.

The blueprint glows faintly under the table light, and I realize the frost has begun forming words again, too faint to read, too alive to ignore.

The ink in the center of the blueprint begins to throb again. Not fading this time, brightening. The word VESPER pulses like a heartbeat, silver bleeding through the parchment, spiderwebbing across every spoke of the circle.

My hand moves before I can stop it. I touch the name.

The world narrows to sound.

A single tone hums through the room, deep and perfect, the exact pitch of the bell. For a heartbeat I see flashes, not memories but impressions of faces in old sepia, a circle of twelve figures around a forge, the bell suspended above them, molten and waiting. One of the faces turns. Her eyes are mine.

The resonance hits like ice water. I jerk my hand back, but the blueprint breathes with me, every rise and fall syncing to my chest. Frost threads snake outward, reaching the edge of the table.

Ezra grabs my shoulders. “Lira! hey, stop. Whatever you’re doing..”

“I’m not doing it,” I gasp. “It’s me. It’s recognizing me.”

He flinches, jaw tightening, because even his logic can’t argue with what’s right in front of him.

Callen’s voice is quiet, reverent. “Because it was tuned to you. From the start.”

The words click, terrible and right. I look at the glowing name again and whisper, “I didn’t inherit this curse. I was made for it.”

The frost stills, like the bell itself just agreed.

The air vibrates, deep and low. Papers lift off the table; shelves rattle. Noor dives for the breaker switch, shouting something I can’t hear over the hum.

Callen moves to shield me again, but this time Ezra doesn’t step aside. They stand on either side of me, both faces lit in the flickering blue-white light. The glow from the blueprint arcs upward, thin strands of frost carving symbols across the wall behind them.

“It’s writing again,” Mara breathes, camera whirring. Her voice shakes. “It’s responding to her words.”

The frost letters twist, overlapping, half-formed phrases whispering through the air: LISTEN. DUE. FOUND. Then everything slams quiet.

The silence rings louder than the noise.

A single line of frost carves itself cleanly across the far wall. Slow, deliberate, like a hand dragging through snow. Each letter forms crisp and sure:

V E S P E R

Below it, smaller, etched so deep the stone itself groans.

/ D U E

The room exhales a plume of frozen air. The lights flicker once, then die. Outside, a single crow taps against the window three times, tink tink tink, and the bell hum answers in the dark.

Callen whispers, “It heard you.”

Ezra doesn’t move. He’s staring at the wall like it just wrote the end of the world.

And all I can think, standing between them, breath fogging in the dim blue light, is that the bell isn’t hunting me anymore.

It’s waiting.