L I R A

Dust is still drifting from the ceiling like slow, lazy snow, except nothing about this feels gentle. My lungs burn with each breath, the cold biting deeper now that the ringing in my skull refuses to fade. The last toll is stuck inside me, echoing under my ribs. When I swallow, it vibrates.

Callen is still behind me. Not touching, not this time, but close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him in pulses, like he’s fighting something inside himself. My knees wobble as I straighten. I don’t know if it’s fear or the bell or the fact that he was just holding me like I was something breakable, something he cared about.

The room is wrecked. Desks cracked, feathers on the floor, frost crawling up chair legs in delicate, frantic spirals. Theo’s coughing in short bursts. The teacher’s hands shake as she herds the others toward the door, pretending she’s calm even though she keeps glancing at the blackboard where the 2 dripped like blood before freezing.

I wiped the dust off my cheek. My palm is trembling. I can’t tell if I’m cold or if I’m just… unraveling.

The door bangs open like it’s been shoved from the outside. Mr. Voss storms in, hair windblown, scarf half-off his neck, eyes wide in a way teachers aren’t supposed to show students. His gaze sweeps the room and lands on the frost first. Then on me.

His face changes. Not surprised. Not confused. Just… resigned. Like he’s seeing a date he prayed wouldn’t come back around.

“Everyone out,” he says, too sharply. “Now. Follow procedure seventeen, quietly.” Procedure seventeen isn’t a thing. At least not one they told us about. The teacher nods too fast, ushering people through the dust cloud. Voss’s jaw flexes as another line of frost crackles across the broken floorboards.

He meets my eyes again. “You three. With me.” Three. Me. Callen. Theo. My stomach drops. That can’t be good. We’re barely through the splintered doorway when someone barrels down the hall toward us.

“Lira!”

Ezra. He looks.. God! he looks terrified. Not the usual council-kid-worried look. This is full panic, hair mussed, shirt untucked, like he sprinted from the opposite end of campus. He reaches for me, and I let him, because my legs still feel shaky. But the moment his fingers touch my arm, he flinches.

“Ow! Shit! why are you freezing?” His hand recoils like he touched a live wire.

“I.. I don’t know.” I don’t. The cold is coming from somewhere deeper than skin. His eyes flick to Callen behind me, and I swear something sharp crosses his face. Jealousy. Anger. Fear. I can’t tell which one hits hardest.

“I felt the tremor,” Ezra says, breathless. “I just.. something was wrong. I knew it. I needed to..” He stops talking like he’s caught himself revealing too much.

Voss clears his throat. “We don’t have time. All of you, move.” Ezra shoots Callen another look. Callen doesn’t bother returning it.

The staircase to the lower tower is narrow, loud with echoes. Every footstep sounds like it might crack the stone further. Someone behind us whispers, “Did you see the frost? My cousin said the same thing happened in ’98.” Another voice shushes them, but the fear is already spreading, sticky and contagious.

A crow follows us down the spiral, hopping from railing to railing with soft taps, like it’s counting.

 “Where’s Ryke?” The words slip out before I can stop them. He was coughing through the dust upstairs, now he’s just… gone.

Theo startles. “I thought he was behind me.”

Voss doesn’t even glance back. “He’s accounted for.” He says it too fast. Too practiced. Callen goes rigid like that answer is the worst one we could’ve gotten.

One-two. Pause. Three. My pulse jumps at each sound. Ezra stays close beside me, close enough that his shoulder brushes mine every couple steps. Callen walks just behind, silent, watchful, like he’s bracing for another collapse.

Voss doesn’t speak until we reach the iron door at the bottom. “Inside,” he says. “And don’t touch anything.” Great. That’s encouraging.

The Restricted Stacks feel wrong the second we step in. The air tastes metallic, like cold coins. The lights flicker even though the switch isn’t faulty. Shelves tower over us, older than the rest of the library, darker wood, carved symbols along the edges that don’t match any language I know. Voss moves fast, like he’s done this exact routine before. 

“Has anyone seen Mara?” I ask, suddenly realizing the quiet feels wrong without her constant commentary. “She should’ve come down with us.”

Ezra’s expression twists. “She didn’t. Someone pulled her out after the collapse. I don’t know who.”

Voss freezes for half a second, barely noticeable, but enough. He knows exactly who. And he’s not telling us. He stops at a shelf with thick chains bolted into the frame. Several books are missing, leaving dusty outlines shaped like ghosts. My breath fogs as I step closer.

“That wasn’t there yesterday,” Theo murmurs, pointing at one of the gaps. Voss ignores him. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to admit it.

My fingertips hover near the shelf. I don’t touch it, I remember what happened with the desk upstairs, but even without contact, the wood vibrates faintly. Then a shimmer crawls across the empty space. Like something invisible is trying to reform its shape.

Ghost-ink flickers. A name starts to appear. Not fully, just the first letter, glowing pale blue like frost catching moonlight.

E—

Ezra leans in. “What are you seeing? It just looks… blank.”

“It’s not blank.” My voice comes out a whisper. “It’s trying to come back.”

Callen’s breath tightens beside me. Voss swears under his breath.

Ezra squints at the glowing outline like he’s expecting it to sharpen if he just concentrates hard enough. It doesn’t. If anything, the faint letter wavers, like it’s reacting to him being too close.

“It’s literally right there,” I whisper. “You don’t see that curve? The edges?”

He shakes his head, frustrated. “It’s just… smudged. Like condensation.”

“It’s not condensation,” Theo mutters, backing up a step. “Condensation doesn’t have handwriting.”

Ezra shoots him a look but doesn’t argue. His eyes come back to me, softer, worried. “Why can you see it when no one else can?”

“Noor might,” Theo says, and right on cue she turns from another shelf, holding a metal case like it’s a science fair prize.

“It’s reacting to her resonance,” Noor says simply. “Like tuning a radio. She’s dialed in.” Dialed in. Great. I’m a human signal tower. Callen’s jaw tightens at that, but he doesn’t say why.

The ghost-letter flickers again, and this time Callen steps closer before I even realize he moved. His hand hovers near my elbow, not touching, like he’s restraining himself. Or restraining something else.

“This shelf shouldn’t be glowing yet,” he says quietly, more to Voss than to me. “Last cycle it didn’t react until..”

Voss turns sharply. “Don’t.” Callen’s expression shutters, but the damage is done. My stomach twists.

“Last cycle?” I echo. “What cycle?” He doesn’t answer. His eyes stay on the half-formed name, storm-dark and way too knowing.

“Callen,” I press, stepping toward him. The cold spikes under my skin. “What did you mean?” His throat works, like he’s forcing something down. “Just… patterns repeat. You don’t want to see this one.”

And suddenly the air between us feels charged, electric, like if I ask again the frost will write the answer for him and neither of us will survive reading it. Noor kneels beside a cleared patch of floor, flipping open the metal case. 

“Since when do you know how to do all this?” I ask, because normal students don’t casually carry tuning forks engraved with runes.

Noor doesn’t look up. “Since the crash.” Something uneasy flickers across her face. “Since someone showed me old notes.” Theo shoots her a sideways glance, like she’s said way too much.

Inside are two long tuning forks, each engraved with small precise markings, frequencies, maybe. She handles them like they’re sacred objects, not chunks of steel she probably stole from the physics lab.

“I’ve been mapping the bell’s resonance since the bus crash,” she says casually, as if that isn’t completely insane. “I think there’s a counter-frequency. A way to… interrupt the toll, maybe.”

Ezra steps forward. “Interrupt? As in stop it?”

“No. Not yet.” Noor taps the first fork lightly against her knee. The tone hums through the stacks, soft but unnervingly pure. The frost along the nearest shelf shivers. My heart skips. I feel it, not in my ears, but in my chest, like a second heartbeat pressing against my own.

“That’s the harmonic frequency,” Noor says.

 “The twins should be here for this,” Theo mutters. “They hear harmonics none of us can.”

“They’re not cleared for the Stacks,” Voss snaps. A lie. I can feel it. Even the frost seems to tighten at the edges.

“Now the inverse, if I’m right.. should reveal something.” She lifts the second fork. It’s darker metal, colder-looking. Even Callen tenses.

“Noor,” Voss warns, “don’t overdo..” She strikes it anyway. The sound isn’t even loud. It’s thin, almost delicate, like the ring of glass right before it breaks. But the moment it hits the air, my entire body seizes.

A sharp, metallic ripple shoots through my spine. My knees buckle. The frost on the shelves screams, not audibly, but inside my bones, like the cold has teeth scraping along my nerves.

“Lira!” Ezra grabs my arm again but jerks back with a hiss when the frost pulses under my skin. “Shit, you’re burning.. no, freezing.. what is that?”

Callen catches me around the waist before I hit the floor, his grip firm, grounding. His breath is ragged against my hair. “Turn it off,” he snaps at Noor. “Now.”

Noor’s eyes go wide. She fumbles, slamming the fork against her palm to stop the vibration. The tone cuts instantly, but the ringing inside me doesn’t. It’s like something else is humming in my ribcage, deeper than the counter-note. Something answering.

I gasp, fingers clutching Callen’s sleeve. “Make it stop.. please..”

His arm tightens. “I’ve got you. Breathe. Lira, look at me.” I try. The world glitches. The lights flicker once, twice, then dim to a sickly blue. Frost veins race across the floor, converging toward us like a swarm. Ezra moves in front of me, but Callen keeps an arm around my waist, refusing to let go.

The frost stops a few feet away. Then, slowly, deliberately, it begins to rise, thin white lines lifting off the ground like threads pulled from a web.

They twist. Curl. Form letters.

D
O
N
’T

The word hangs in the cold air for a single, shivering second. Then all at once the frost snaps, shattering into glittering shards that whip across the stacks. The bell hums again, so faint I don’t know if anyone else hears it. A warning or a promise, I can’t tell. My breath catches, half-frozen in my throat.

Ezra’s face drains of color. “Don’t what?” Callen’s hand tightens on me, fierce and terrified. “She’s reacting too fast,” he murmurs, voice breaking into something raw. “This isn’t supposed to happen yet.” The bell inside my chest answers with a soft, disastrous thrum. And everything goes cold.