E L L E 

Darkness hums against my skin, for a second I think maybe I went blind, because there’s no edge, no shape, just black breathing around me. Then the air moves, cold and sharp, and the floor under my palms bites like ice. The vents are whispering again, a low sigh through the metal. My breath fogs, faint and uneven.

The cot is on its side and the lights are dead except one emergency strip burning dull red over the door, bleeding across frost-slick tile. Everything smells like ozone and metal.

His words still cling to the air. I won’t let it take you. He’s gone, and the silence left behind feels like punishment. I push myself upright. The bandage around my palm throbs under the gauze, a small heartbeat that doesn’t belong to me. Down the hall, something crackles, the sound of ice spreading. The locker door still stands half-open, light pooling out of it like a heartbeat. Every instinct says run. I move anyway.

The corridor is wrong. too long, too quiet. My steps echo in double time, like someone else is walking with me half a beat late. The bells outside toll, three, maybe four but they don’t sound right; the rhythm stumbles, repeating a note like a record skip.

Frost crawls up the lockers in thin, delicate lines, veins of pale blue under the metal paint. Numbers blur beneath the rime: 233, 234, 235 … My stomach knots when I reach 237. The door is breathing, not moving exactly, just flexing, a slow inward pulse like lungs under skin. A glow leaks through the crack, soft and white-blue, painting the air with mist.

“Stop it,” I whisper, but the sound comes out smaller than I mean. The locker hums back, low and steady. The bandage on my palm flares. Frost bursts out from under my shoes, spider-webbing toward the door.

My hand rises before I can think. The metal shivers under my fingertips, warm for a second, then biting cold. Inside, the light shifts, deeper, darker. The air bends like heat off asphalt, and somewhere, far off but close enough to make my throat close, a voice hums the first note of my name.

“Elle!”

The sound hits me like a shove. I spin, heart slamming into my ribs. Luke barrels out of the dark end of the corridor, hoodie half-zipped, flashlight jerking in his hand. The beam cuts across my face, then the frost, then the open locker.

“Jesus, I’ve been looking everywhere..” He stops when he sees the light coming from inside the door. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” I manage, voice raw. “It won’t close.”

He grabs my wrist, warm skin against the cold metal still under my fingers. “Then don’t touch it. Elle, come on.”

His flashlight sputters, weak and yellow now, barely pushing back the blue glow bleeding from the locker. The frost reaches for his shoes, delicate filaments coiling around the rubber.

“I heard something,” I say, because lying would take more breath than I have.

“Yeah, me too, bells, static, whatever. We’re leaving.” His hand tightens, gentle but stubborn. For a moment I let him pull me back, just enough to feel warmth crawl up my arm.  Then the hum rises, low and alive, and the light flares brighter. The locker exhales a gust of air that smells like winter and old lavender.

Luke curses under his breath. “Elle, what the hell did you wake up?”

A sound threads through the corridor, soft, like fabric shifting against stone. Luke whirls toward it, flashlight cutting through dust. I know that sound before I see Him. He steps out of the dark like he was carved from it, familiar and wrong all at once. The red emergency light slices across his face, turning the edges of his eyes to silver.

“What are you doing here?” Luke snaps, still holding onto me.

He doesn’t look at him, his gaze finds my hand instead, the one pressed to the metal. The frost beneath it spirals, alive.

“Let go,” he says quietly. Not a command, but something heavier. Luke moves to pull me back again, but He shakes his head. “Not like that. The spiral reacts to fear. You’ll make it worse.”

Luke bristles. “And you know that how?”

His eyes flick up, sharp. “Because I’ve seen what it becomes when she panics.” The air hums, the same note I heard inside the locker. My heart stumbles.

“Both of you, stop,” I whisper, but my voice barely carries. The frost under my palm trembles, brightening until the glow paints their faces. The hum deepens, like the locker’s heart syncing with mine.

“I have to see,” I say. Neither of them answers.

The metal is too warm now, it shouldn’t be. Frost should be cold and biting, but this feels like fever, like blood rushing beneath ice. I trace the spiral like He said, slow, from the outer ring toward the center. The hum smooths out, the pitch softening. For a second, it almost sounds like breathing.

Luke stands beside me, his other hand hovering near my shoulder, not touching. He stays a few feet back, eyes narrowed, every muscle wound tight like he’s holding the air still.

The locker clicks once, sharp, then the door shudders and swings open wider. A pale gust rushes out, sweeping my hair into my face. The lights above us flicker, buzz, die, then flare again.

The space inside stretches wrong. Rows of metal shelving warp downward into dark, too deep, too far. There’s no back wall, just fog rolling inward like the inside of a throat.

“What the hell,” Luke breathes. His voice sounds far away, warped. My palm throbs with heat, then pain. I yank it back, but the spiral still glows faintly on my skin, burned into the gauze.

He steps closer, quiet. “It’s awake.” Something inside the dark moves, slow and liquid, just past where the light reaches.

I can’t look away, the inside of the locker shifts like it’s made of water. Shapes ripple across the fog, tiny reflections of my face, hundreds of them, each one a fraction off. A smell leaks out, lavender, sharp and wrong, mixed with old snow. My throat tightens.

Luke’s hand finds my shoulder again. “Elle, don’t go closer.”

But I already am. the pull isn’t gentle. It’s a hook under my ribs. My bandaged palm pulses with each step. The hum from the locker threads into my heartbeat until I can’t tell which is which.

He moves in fast, hand closing around my other wrist, the grip strong enough to hurt. “That’s enough.” The word breaks something, the reflection inside the locker twitches, every mirrored version of me snapping its head toward him at once. I jerk back, choking on air, the motion sends a wave of frost skimming across the tiles.

Luke curses again, reaching to steady me, but the ground under our feet shivers. Time stutters. The bell outside tolls once, then again, the same note twice.

He’s jaw tightens. “A slip.” I blink, dizzy. My head feels empty, like something took a second of memory and didn’t give it back. Then, from inside the locker, something sighs. Soft. Familiar. The sigh lingers, colder than breath, it slips through the hall like smoke, brushing my cheek.  Luke pulls me back instinctively, arm wrapping around my shoulders, but the air between us chills so fast it burns.

“Do you feel that?” Luke whispers.

He nods once. His pupils flare wide, catching what little light’s left. “It’s not the locker anymore. Something’s leaking through.” The corridor shifts, shadows crawl across the floor even though the lights aren’t moving. Frost blossoms at our feet, blooming in slow spirals that melt just as fast. For a moment, I see footprints in the rime, bare, human-sized, stopping a few feet from me, then nothing. Just fog.

My breath catches. “Someone’s here.”

“No one’s here,” Luke says, but his voice isn’t sure.

He’s gaze snaps toward the empty space beside the lockers. The air there seems to shimmer, thin as glass. “It’s learning how to stand.”

The hum changes pitch,  I can almost make out words now, faint and broken, like a voice caught between radio channels. My chest tightens, the light inside the locker pulses again, faint blue turning bone-white. The frost on the walls starts to retract, drawn back toward the dark, like it’s inhaling everything it just gave. Then it speaks again, not a whisper this time. A call.

“Elowen.”

It’s her. My mother’s voice, warm where everything else is ice. I freeze. The sound isn’t echoing, it’s right beside my ear, as if she’s standing just behind me.

Luke stiffens. “Elle?”

Luke doesn’t hear it the way I do, for him, it’s only a breath, a shift in air pressure. But I can feel it, the way her voice curls inside my chest like it knows where to fit.

He moves closer, slow, deliberate. “Don’t answer,” he says, softer than before. I nod, but the word is already on my tongue. It tastes like home and snow and grief.

“Mom?”

The light erupts, the locker door swings open, hitting the wall with a metallic crack. Frost slams outward in a gust that knocks Luke back. The fog inside clears for a heartbeat, and I see it, an impossible depth lined with shifting mirrors, all of them showing my reflection staring back.

And behind me, just beyond the threshold, a shadow stands in the shape of a woman.

“Elowen,” she whispers again, reaching out.

I can’t breathe, Luke shouts my name. He lunges forward. The world tilts, the floor falling away in a rush of cold and static. Then, nothing but her voice, soft and certain, cutting through everything else.

“Come home.”