L I R A 

Sleep doesn’t come. Every time I close my eyes, the strip gleams behind my lids, steel letters shouting at me in silence: RUN. But you can’t run from something that counts down inside your bones.

By morning, the whispers have shifted. It’s not just about Ines and her bragging. Not just about the heritage ceremony. Now it’s about me. Not by name, not yet, but I hear the threads: the girl marked first, the girl who keeps living, the girl the bell is circling.

Mr. Voss catches me after class with the kind of look teachers use when they’re about to tell you detention isn’t working. His hand tightens on the strap of his satchel. “You’re coming with me.”

It isn’t a question.

Ezra, Mara, and Ryke fall into step behind us before he can stop them. Voss doesn’t bother arguing, just mutters something about “containment by numbers” and unlocks a door I didn’t know led anywhere.

The library corridor beyond is colder than outside air should be. Dust hangs in the beam of his flashlight, thicker with every step. The chain across the next doorway reads RESTRICTED — FACULTY ONLY. And beneath, in faint, frosted letters, someone has scrawled one more word:

LISTEN.

My throat tightens. Always the same message. Always the same demand.

Ezra moves closer without asking, his shoulder brushing mine like he’s ready to shield me from air itself. Mara’s camera strap creaks as she clutches it tighter. Ryke pretends to yawn, but his knuckles are white.

“Five minutes,” Voss warns, sliding the key into the lock. “No phones. No noise. And if anyone asks, you were never here.”

The gate screeches open, a sound too much like a crow’s cry. Cold breath spills out, and I wonder if stepping inside is walking into the bell’s lungs.

The stacks smell of paper left too long in cold air. Not mold, not dust but something sharper, like ink frozen mid-sentence.

Mr. Voss’s flashlight beam skates across metal shelving, the light catching on padlocks and catalog tags yellowed with age. He stops at a section marked ARCHIVES: STUDENT RECORDS. His keys rattle once before the lock clicks free.

If the council hated secrets so much, why were their minutes scrubbed clean? Ezra said the gaps were deliberate, like parents knew too much and erased it anyway.

“These are supposed to hold every enrollment, every transfer, every graduation since the school opened,” he says, voice flat as chalk dust. He pulls a ledger free, drops it onto a steel cart. The thud echoes down the aisle.

The cover frosts over at his touch.

Ezra leans closer immediately, his fingers flexing like he’s resisting the urge to snatch it from Voss. “Don’t you see?” His voice trembles with the edge of obsession. “It reacts. The ledger responds.”

“Paper doesn’t respond,” Ryke mutters, but the nervous bite in his laugh ruins the joke.

Voss flips the book open to a page of neat columns of names, dates, tidy checkmarks. Halfway down, the lines blur into smooth, empty paper. Not scratched out. Not torn away. Just gone.

Mara breathes in sharply, her breath fogging. “Ghost-ink.”

I swallow, my throat dry. My fingers ache to touch, even though I know better. I can feel the absence from here, like silence buzzing against my skin.

Voss angles the flashlight. For an instant, the erased rows shimmer faintly, as if something tries to surface beneath the page. Letters half-formed, frost catching in their curves. They fade before anyone can read them.

“Names vanish,” Voss says, jaw tight. “Records vanish. Year after year.” His eyes cut to me. “But not all at once. One by one. Like someone’s keeping score.”

The words hit too close. My stomach knots. The strip in detention flashes behind my eyes RUN and the tally on the frosted window, DUE / 2.

Ezra steps into my space before I can sway. He doesn’t touch me, but his presence is heavy, grounding. His gaze doesn’t leave the page. “Whoever they were…they’re not gone. They’re waiting.”

His voice is too steady, too certain. I know he’s promising me more than the erased names.

Ezra angles the book toward me, so close I can see the tiny tremor in his hand. “Don’t let it scare you,” he says softly, almost like it’s just for me. “They can erase names from paper, not people. Not you.”

The words land heavy. For a moment I almost believed him.

Because the frost is still pulsing faintly under my fingertip, letters are straining to form, and the strip from detention is still burned into my brain.

Ezra leans closer, steady but urgent. “I’m not letting it take you. I’ll burn every ledger in this place before.. ” He cuts himself off, swallows. His jaw locks, like he’s already crossed a line he shouldn’t.

Heat flares in my chest that have nothing to do with the frost. His certainty should feel comforting, but it coils tight instead, dangerous. Like promises to fight the bell always come with a price.

“Careful,” a voice murmurs from the shadows.

I flinch.

Callen is at the end of the aisle, hood down, face carved sharp in the half-light. His eyes flicker between Ezra’s hand, too near mine, and the ledger glowing faintly on the cart. Storms waiting to break.

Ezra stiffens. He doesn’t move his hand away, but his jaw tightens as if every muscle in him is daring Callen to challenge him.

The air feels too small with both of them in it.

Before I can find words, Noor breaks the standoff with a practical cough. “Okay. This is exactly why I came.” She crouches, tugging her pack open. “You two can measure egos later. Right now? Frequencies.”

She unfolds a velvet case to reveal three metal tuning forks, polished until they gleam. Tiny numbers are etched at their stems: 256Hz. 384Hz. 512Hz.

Ryke blinks. “What, we’re starting a band?”

Noor smirks faintly. “The choir twins can stall a toll with harmony. Lira hears counter notes when frost words form. The bell responds to resonance, we’ve all seen it. So I figured…what if we test known frequencies instead of waiting for accidents?”

Ezra’s eyes light with sharp interest. “You think you can jam it.”

“Or at least make it stutter,” Noor says. “Like gravel in the gears.”

“Or gasoline on the fire,” Callen mutters, still watching me like he knows exactly how wrong this could go.

I swallow, torn between Ezra’s certainty, Callen’s warning, and Noor’s reckless spark.

And the frost seems to be listening, waiting to see which one of us it believes.

Noor lifts the lowest fork between two fingers, her eyes bright. “Three seconds. That’s it. Just to see if it reacts.”

“This is not happening in my library,” Mr. Voss snaps, but his voice shakes. His flashlight beam jitters across the stacks, as if he’s half-hoping nothing will answer.

“It already is,” Noor mutters, and strikes the fork against the heel of her shoe.

The note blooms clean, steady, too pure for a room full of dust and ghosts. It threads through the air and into the frost.

The erased lines on the ledger shimmer faintly, like names straining to the surface. My breath stutters.

Ezra leans forward, intense. “It’s working.”

“No,” Callen says at the end of the aisle, flat and certain. “It’s listening.”

The fork hums, the frost pulses, and suddenly the sound isn’t outside me anymore, it’s inside. Thin as a wire, vibrating in my ribs.

Pain prickles sharp under my sternum. I gasp.

Ezra’s hand snaps to my shoulder, steadying. “Lira. Hey! look at me. Breathe.”

“It hurts,” I manage, voice scraping.

“Stop this now!” Voss barks, but it doesn’t sound like a teacher’s command. It sounds like a man begging not to be swallowed.

Noor lowers the fork, eyes wide. “I only tapped it once..”

The hum doesn’t fade. It lingers in the frost, a thin silver thread stretched too tight.

The ledger on the cart flashes, a letter half-born, then swallowed again.

I press a hand to my chest, as if I can shove the sound back out. My knees buckle. Ezra catches me, griping iron at my waist.

“Enough!” Voss’s flashlight clatters onto the cart as he grips the ledger, trying to slam it shut. Frost skitters up his fingers like claws. He yanks back, swearing under his breath.

Callen strides forward, crossing the threshold he’d kept until now. His hand finds the space just above mine, heat bracing against cold. “It’s not stopping,” he says, storm-dark eyes locked on the frost. “It’s waiting to see if she breaks.”

The note shifts, higher, thinner. The pain lances sharp behind my eyes.

And in the frost at the window, new lines carve themselves, deliberate as ink:

DUE / 2

Underlined. Final.

The hum sharpens, a wire pulled too tight. It carves through me, not around me.

I clutch at my chest, but the sound is already inside, vibrating bone, scraping nerves. My knees buckle.

Ezra lunges, arms catching me before I hit the cart. “Lira!” His voice is fierce, steady, the way you grip a rope before someone slips. His hand finds my waist, anchoring.

The frost doesn’t care. It hums higher, pressing against my skull until the world whites out.

Then another heat flares through the cold, Callen. He’s there, too close, too solid. One arm cages my shoulders, his other palm presses flat over my sternum like he can shove the sound back into the frost. His breath is sharp at my ear. “Hold on.”

Two anchors. Two centers of gravity. Both of them pulling me different ways, both refusing to let go.

“I’ve got her,” Ezra snaps. His grip tightens like he can will my body to obey.

“You don’t,” Callen growls, low and dark. “Not from this.”

The words blur. Everything blurs. All I feel is heat on one side, storm-cold certainty on the other, and the hum tearing down the middle.

The ledger on the cart flashes once, letters writhing like a name almost born, then slams shut under its own weight. The frost at the window carves the tally deeper:

My vision tunnels. My body folds.

The last thing I know is both of them holding me, neither willing to let go, while the frost hums on like it’s laughing.