L I R A

Dawn seeps through the cracks where the stained glass used to be. The bell has not rung again, but it feels like it is listening. Callen has not moved since it broke. His pulse beats steady under the skin, matching mine like the echo never stopped.

Ezra found us like that, frost on the floor and silence pressed between us. He did not ask what happened. Noor just whispered something about resonance overload, and Ryke said nothing for once.

By afternoon, we all pretended to be normal again. Classes, gossip, cafeteria noise. Like we could outtalk what we saw.

It almost worked, until Ines screamed.

Her scream drags me down the hallway to the cheer squad locker room. The air smells like perfume, hairspray, and something sharp underneath.

Ines Vale stands in front of the mirror, mascara streaking down her cheeks, eyes wild. Her makeup mirror fogs and clears in pulses, like lungs trying to breathe. And stuck to the glass, glinting through condensation, is a strip.

It did not fall. It has grown there, the edges fused into the mirror like frost metal grafted into silver.

“Ines, don’t touch it.”

“I didn’t! It just appeared!” Her voice cracks. “It is my name, isn’t it? Tell me it is not.”

Her reflection wavers. The letters behind her lips ripple, forming, then reforming, as if written under ice.

Ezra bursts in behind me, breathless. He freezes when he sees it. “It shouldn’t be possible. The ledger hasn’t been updated.”

“It doesn’t care,” I say. The glass exhales again, fogging over both of our faces. “It is already here.”

Ines’s hands tremble so hard the pearls on her bracelet rattle. “You fix things, Ezra. You fix everything. Please, make it go away.”

Ezra’s expression stays tight, too calm to be real. He slides his tablet from his bag, tapping through frost-tracked notes. “If a strip manifests, it should register a ledger delta. A name shift. Anything.”

“Maybe you are looking in the wrong ledger,” I say quietly.

He does not look up. “Do not start.”

The mirror fogs again. My reflection blurs. Ines’s name pulses through the mist, thin veins of frost lighting up like veins under skin.

Ezra swipes again, frustration flashing. “There is nothing. No entry, no timestamp. It is like the system skipped her.”

“Or it did not need permission,” I whisper.

He glances at me, and for half a second the calm breaks. “Then it is rewriting its own rules.”

Ines chokes on a sob. “You mean I am dead already?”

I reach for her wrist, steadying her shaking hand. “Not yet,” I say. “Not if we learn how to stop it.”

But the mirror breathes again, slow, patient, aware.

The hum deepens, a note so low I feel it in my teeth. It is not sound. It is pressure, the same frequency that thrummed through Callen’s chest when the bond flared.

My pulse syncs to it before I can stop it. The air vibrates like a plucked wire, tugging memories I am not ready for, his hand on my wrist, the heat, the vow.

Ezra notices the way I flinch. “Lira?”

“I hear it,” I whisper.

He straightens, jaw locked. “What do you mean, hear it?”

“It has the same tone as…” I cut myself off before I say Callen’s name.

The mirror fogs again, louder now, like an inhale through metal lungs. Ines backs away until her shoulders hit the lockers. Frost crawls outward in branching veins, tracing over the tile floor toward us.

Ezra grabs my arm. “If it resonates, we can counter it.”

“It is not ours,” I say. “It is learning.”

The frost halts mid-crawl, as if listening.

Noor is already in the lab when we burst in, goggles perched on her head, wires snaking across the counter. The air hums faintly with feedback. Ryke lounges on a stool, pretending he is not pale.

“Please tell me you did not bring cursed décor,” Noor says.

Ezra sets down his tablet. “Mirror manifestation. No fall point, no ledger log.”

Noor whistles low. “So it is self-generating. Great.” She nudges a tuning fork the size of her arm across the table. “Good timing. I rebuilt the counter-chime with bell-shard alloy. Should damp mirror frequencies.”

“Should,” Ryke repeats.

She ignores him. “Intent plus resonance. Remember? Volume does not matter. Will does. We align the tone, we stall the toll.”

I watch the fork quiver even before she strikes it. “It is already vibrating,” I say.

Noor frowns. “Then it is picking up something in the room.”

The metal gives a faint, answering note, the same low pitch from Ines’s mirror.

Ryke mutters, “Guess that is my cue,” and presses his fingers to the base, grounding the tone.

The hum climbs higher. My chest tightens.

“It is off-beat,” I warn.

Ryke’s pulse stutters, and the lights flicker.

The hum spikes into a shriek. Ryke jerks backward as the fork blazes silver-white, the sound slicing through the lab like glass screaming.

“Kill it!” Noor yells, slamming her palm on the cutoff switch. Sparks jump from the counter, fizzing blue.

Ryke’s chair tips. I catch his arm before he hits the floor. His skin is ice-cold, heartbeat fluttering out of sync.

“Noor!” I shout.

She is already on her knees beside the fork, muttering through clenched teeth. “The resonance looped back. Off-beat again.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means it found its rhythm instead of the bell’s.”

The fork hums softer now, matching the pulse under my fingers. Ryke’s, not mine. Not the bell’s.

Ezra crouches beside us, scanning the data flickering across his screen. “His vitals are syncing with the fork. That is impossible.”

“Off-beat,” Noor repeats. “He is absorbing backlash. If he stays tethered, it will fry his heart.”

Ryke wheezes a laugh that is more breath than sound. “At least it is not boring.”

“Shut up,” I say, pressing my hand harder to his wrist. “You are fine. You are fine.”

He is not. The hum fades, but the smell of ozone clings to the air, sharp as lightning before a storm.

When Noor stabilizes Ryke, Ezra rounds on me. “We are not doing this again. Not every stray name can be saved.”

I stare at him. “Stray? You mean Ines.”

“She is not part of this.” His voice stays low but brittle. “The ledger did not record her for a reason.”

“Because it is changing,” I shoot back. “Because it does not need permission anymore.”

Ezra exhales sharply, pacing. “You heard Noor. The thing adapts. If we poke it again, it will hit harder next time.”

Ines stands by the lab door, pale and shaking, makeup streaked like war paint. “So I am just supposed to wait for it to kill me?”

Ezra does not answer.

“She is right,” Noor says quietly, glancing between us. “The curse is evolving. Hiding will not help.”

Ezra’s jaw tightens. “We cannot afford another casualty.”

“Then maybe stop deciding who counts as one,” I snapped.

The room goes silent, except for the faint hiss of cooling metal. Frost creeps across the counter, forming veins that spell half a word before fading.

I step closer, voice steady. “Even the ones we do not trust deserve a chance to survive.”

The frost finishes the word it started. LISTEN.

Ezra breaks first. “You are letting your feelings rewrite logic.”

“Maybe logic is what keeps getting us killed,” I fire back.

He looks at me like he does not recognize me anymore. “You think compassion will outsmart a curse?”

“I think it is the only thing that has not tried to control it.”

The fork on the counter vibrates again, soft and uncertain. Noor’s gaze flicks to the mirror tablet still open beside it. “It is reacting to you,” she says quietly. “To whatever you just said.”

Ines swallows, voice small. “Then what do I do?”

Ezra hesitates. That hesitation costs him.

“Stay here,” I say before he can answer. “We are not abandoning anyone.”

The frost on the counter sharpens like it agrees. LISTEN fades, replaced by a single mirrored curve, half a letter waiting to form.

Ezra stares at it, jaw tightening. “You just made it worse.”

“Or maybe,” I tell him, “I made a choice.”

The glass hums once, accepting the challenge.

Night falls before any of us speak again. Noor packs the fork in a padded crate, muttering equations that sound like prayers. Ryke’s breathing steadies, color creeping back into his face. Ezra writes and rewrites the same formula, erasing every line.

Ines drifts toward the lab’s side door, silent. The mirror from her locker sits propped on the counter, hairline cracks webbing the surface.

“I cannot look at it anymore,” she says. Her hands shake. “It is like it is watching me.”

Ezra moves as if to stop her, then does not.

Ines grabs the mirror, drags it to the utility sink, and flicks a lighter to life. “If the ledger wants my name, it can take ash.”

“No,” I start forward, too late.

The flame touches the glass. It does not burn. It breathes. The fire folds inward, sucked through the mirror’s cracks, hissing like something alive.

The strip liquefies, runs like molten silver, then reforms, clean and untouched, at the center of the mirror.

The lighter hits the floor.

Across the glass, new letters carve themselves beside her name, glowing frost-white: REBOUND.

Ines screams. The sound splinters the overhead lights.

Noor lunges to shut the fireproof hatch. Ryke drags Ines back. I cannot move. The mirror hums once, satisfied, and the frost around the letters spreads in a perfect ring, like the toll ripple of a bell.

Ezra stares, pale. “It reformed itself.”

“It remembered itself,” I whisper.

The light dies, leaving only our reflections, fractured, multiplied, watching from the shards.

And in every reflection, the word still glows.
REBOUND.