L I R A

The metallic click follows me out of the library like something small and sharp hooked behind my ear. Ezra and Pia keep walking like nothing happened. Of course they don’t hear it.

A drift of chalk dust falls from the ceiling. Midair, it crystallizes—actual frost, then melts before anyone notices. This school bends itself around me now, and I don’t know how to stop it. Ezra hovers near my elbow, careful, warm. It should help. It doesn’t.

Because my skin is still lit up from when Callen touched me. That accidental brush. The electric jolt I shouldn’t be thinking about. I hate that my body remembers him so clearly. I hate that I don’t want it to stop.

“Lira.” Pia barrels into me, waving her phone like it’s about to explode. “We have a problem.” We always do.

“It’s the assembly cameras,” she rushes out. “I checked the feeds. I thought maybe we’d see the strip falling or God, anything—but…”

My mouth goes dry. “But what?”

“It’s gone.”
Her voice shakes. “Not glitch-gone. Deleted-gone. Except no one deleted it.”

Ezra stiffens beside me, already preparing an excuse. He takes the phone like he’s disarming a bomb. “Cameras reset. Footage corrupts. This isn’t supernatural. It’s a tech issue.”

Pia gives him a flat look. “Tech issues don’t erase one exact moment and leave the rest crystal clear.”

Ezra ignores her and turns to me. “You’re safe. There’s an explanation.” Except the metallic click is still echoing in my skull, curling around the word the frost spelled for me.

LISTEN.

Yeah. I’m trying. Pia pulls up the only surviving frame. My heart stutters. In the middle of the frozen crowd, where I remember standing, there’s a warped smear—my outline distorted like the camera couldn’t hold onto me.

Ezra leans in. “Artifacting. Compression. Nothing weird.”

“Look at the edges,” I whisper. They’re frosting over. Thin veins of ice crawling across the pixels, slow as breath on glass.

Pia squints. “Uh… my screen looks normal?” The frost melts the second I blink. Then the phone speaker cracks with static— Not static.  The click.  Sharp, metallic, unmistakable. I flinch. Ezra doesn’t.

“You didn’t hear that?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

“It’s following me,” slips out before I can swallow it.

Ezra grabs my wrist, gentle, but too firm. “Nothing is following you. You’re overwhelmed.” Another click echoes from behind the lockers. Soft. Precise. Like something tapping out a code only I can hear. Ezra doesn’t react at all.

Pia does, a little. “Okay, that one was… weird.”

“Pipes,” Ezra says quickly. Right. Pipes that sound exactly like the thing whispering frost words at me. A cold draft snakes down the hallway, chilling the back of my knees. Fog rolls along the floor, slow, creeping, wrong. Students barely notice. But I do. Because Callen steps out of it. Like the fog spit him out.

One second the hallway is empty. The next he’s there, shoulders tense, eyes locked on me, expression carved from something that knows too much. Whispers ignite instantly.

“Why is he always around her?”
“Did he follow her?”
“Is something going on?”

Ezra’s grip tightens on my wrist. Callen doesn’t look at him. Or Pia. Just me. And something in my chest pulled tight, like a thread between us went from slack to stretched, humming under my ribs.

I try to look away. I can’t. My pulse stumbles. My breath trips over itself. My body remembers him. Respond to him. I hate that it feels like relief seeing him there in the fog.  I hate it almost as much as I want to step toward him. Ezra steps in front of me so fast it jolts the air.

“What are you doing here?” he snaps.

Callen barely glances at him. “It isn’t finished with you.” Not hello. Not an explanation. Just… that.

Ezra’s jaw tics. “You don’t talk to her like that.”

“I’m not scaring her,” Callen murmurs. “I’m warning her.”

He takes one step closer. Fog parts around him like it knows how to move for him. The hum hits me again, under my ribs, buzzing through my skin, the same resonance from the ledger, from his touch. I feel it spark to life between us, invisible but real, like the air is tuning itself to a frequency only we can hear.

Ezra sees it. Sees me. His jaw clenches. “Lira. Don’t.” I wasn’t doing anything. But God, it feels like I was. Callen’s voice drops. “Stay away from the stairwell.”

Ezra scoffs. “She doesn’t take orders from you.”

Callen’s gaze doesn’t move off me. “You will. When you understand.” I hate how the words settle inside me like they belong there. The hallway explodes with whispers before I can react.

“Did you see the way he looked at her?”
“Ezra’s about to snap.”
“My cousin said the footage blurred around her—on purpose.”
“I heard the frost spelled RUN.”
“Callen knew. He always knows.”

The noise swells, pressing against my ears until I can’t tell where the rumors end and my own thoughts begin.

Ezra slings an arm around me, not gentle. Possessive. “We’re leaving.” I let him pull me away. But when I glance back, Callen hasn’t moved. He watches me like we’re alone. I look away before I break.

Ezra keeps close, guiding me down the hall. “You don’t have to listen to him. He doesn’t know you. Not like I do.” I nod because I’m supposed to. Ezra’s warmth should ground me. His logic should make sense. He’s steady, consistent, safe.

I tell myself he’s who I trust. But my body is still humming, an echo of electricity lingering under my skin, like some part of me hasn’t caught up to the choice I’m pretending to make.

Like something in me is waiting. We reach the stairwell. The lights flicker once, twice then the metallic click rings out again. Loud. Sharp.

Ezra freezes. “What the hell?”

The stairwell window frosts over in a single breath. Ice races across the glass like claws dragging from the inside. Letters scrape into existence:

LISTEN.

My heart slams upward. Under it, ghost-ink pulses through the frost, faint but alive:

DUE.

Ezra steps in front of me. “Lira, don’t look at that. We need to go.” But I can’t move. The air shifts, cold rushing up the stairs, thickening, gathering. Fog curls over the bottom steps. And Callen is there.

Not arriving. Not appearing. Just there. Eyes dark.  Expression set. Like he already knows the truth threading its way toward me.

“Lira,” he says softly. Just my name. But it hits like a bell toll vibrating under my skin.