The library felt colder in the morning, with breath clouds and cathedral hush, dust drifting like stirred snow. None of the students at Reichenbach used the library for its intended purpose. They usually used this place as an excuse to skip class, a way to seem productive without actually doing any work.
Thorn and Xavier had taken over a back table beneath a row of antlered sconces, a fortress of cracked ledgers and ribbon-tied folios stacking up like ramparts around their elbows.
They were both running on four hours of sleep and spite.
"Tell me that says 'Resonant Bindings, Before Reform.'" Xavier squinted at a hand-lettered spine that might also have said 'Remembered Banquets.'
Thorn leaned closer, eyes narrowed. "It says 'Rancid Buns.'" She tapped the leather with a nail. "Kitchen archives."
He exhaled a laugh that surprised both of them, quick and hoarse. "Of course it does." He tossed the book to the side, running his hands down his face in exhaustion.
Thorn dragged another tome across the wood, the cover gritting like sand. Her hand tried to brush away the thick, untouched layer of dust, just for it to not move.
"All right. 'Acoustics in the Old Wards.' That sounds promising."
She cracked it open, the smell of decaying paper slapping them both in the face. The author had devoted three hundred pages to bell towers and wind direction, and the margin notes suggested a deep, unresolved hatred for pigeons.
"What the hell?" Thorn blinked, flipping through a few more pages.
"Pigeons. Defilers of tone purity. Perpetrators of aerial sin. Who writes like this?"
Xavier leaned over her shoulder. "It's… disturbingly poetic."
"Who knew pigeons were a known enemy of sinister choirs?" Thorn said, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
"Don't," Xavier warned, but he was already smiling.
"Too late." She nudged his elbow with the corner of the folio. "Do you think a pigeon stole his wife or something?"
"No," he said, mock-serious, leaning closer. "Clearly, it killed his parents when he was a boy. He's been training for revenge ever since."
That broke them.
The sound came out too loud for a library. A half laugh, half release. It was the kind of delirious, where the can't-stop giggle sneaks up after too many sleepless nights and too much fear. Thorn ducked her head, shaking with quiet laughter, pretending to read to cover her smile.
"Great," she murmured, voice still shaky. "We're officially delirious."
A librarian cleared her throat three rooms away, clearly offended by the concept of cheer.
They sobered, but not fully.
Xavier leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his hair and trying, but failing, to suppress the grin tugging at his mouth.
"Guess laughter killed her parents, too."
Thorn snorted, the sound catching on another laugh before she smacked his arm lightly with the book. "Shut up," she hissed, still smiling. Xavier took the book out of her hands and continued to flip through it, pausing for a moment.
He pushed a sepia map toward her. "Look. Pre-expansion. The wards' original lines." Pale ink traced a web around the oldest buildings, thinning toward the cemetery, disappearing before the forest. "The weak points line up with where we heard the song the loudest."
Thorn traced a fingertip over the faded edge. "And here," she said softly, tapping a minor glyph etched near the Observatory. "A resonance mark. They were tuning the stones."
He glanced at her. "We actually might actually figure this out."
She snorted. "Hypothetically."
They looked at each other a beat longer than either meant to. For the first time, it felt like they could occupy the same table without bracing for impact.
Hypothetically.
A bell tolled somewhere in the stacks, thin, mechanical, the library's idea of kindness. Homeroom loomed.
Thorn shut the map. "Come on, genius. Let's go pretend we're normal."
"Funny," he said, standing, taking the book from Thorn's hands and sliding it into his bag. "I left my normal in another country."
"Didn't think you ever had one," she muttered, but there was the faintest trace of a smirk at the corner of her mouth.
By the time their fifth period came around, the academy had settled into its uneasy rhythm.
Runic Theory & Symbology was held in one of the oldest classrooms on campus, tucked beneath the east bell tower, where the air always smelled faintly of copper and candle smoke. The walls were lined with slate panels etched in centuries-old scrawl. Some still faintly pulsing with residual magic, others scarred and silent from overuse. Dust gathered in the cracks like ash.
Mrs. Vanguard stood at the front, tall and deliberate, her hair a streaked halo of white bound into a knot so tight it could have held a ward in place. She was the type of woman who spoke softly but still made everyone sit up straighter. She was rumored to have written half the modern rune lexicon herself and corrected the other half in the margins.
She didn't look up when Thorn and Xavier slipped inside, just lifted a piece of chalk and continued her work. Each stroke hissed faintly against the blackboard, the symbols shifting between alphabets. One moment Elvish, then Latin, then something older that twisted if you stared too long.
"Runes," Mrs. Vanguard said at last, without turning. "Are living syntax. You do not draw them; you negotiate with them. Every line, every angle, every breath you take while writing one. A contract, if you will."
The class murmured as pens scratched paper.
Thorn and Xavier took the unclaimed seats in the back, side by side but angled just enough apart to pretend they weren't. The faint glow of half-active wards flickered on the floor beneath their desks. Thorn could feel them through her boots, each pulse a quiet echo of the resonance still haunting the air.
Marcellus lounged two rows over, posture immaculate, smirk already sharpened. He caught Xavier's eye and tapped his temple with his bow-callused fingers, a little salute that meant nothing good.
Xavier opened his notebook to a blank page, but his hand hovered, hesitant. Across the room, Mrs. Vanguard drew a binding circle around a symbol, and the rune inside shivered, the chalk lines vibrating with a low hum that felt dangerously familiar.
Thorn's gaze flicked to him. She didn't have to say it. You hear it too.
He nodded once, barely perceptible.
Marcellus waited until the room had settled, then pitched his voice to carry. "Careful with your notes, Thorpe," he called lightly, feigning concern. "Wouldn't want you to hallucinate more guilt on the margins."
A few chuckled too quickly. Safe laughter.
Xavier didn't look up. He rolled his pencil once between his fingers, knuckles pale, eyes fixed on the blank page in front of him.
Thorn did look up. Slowly.
She rose halfway out of her chair, the motion deliberate, quiet. The table gave a low creak beneath her hand.
Marcellus's grin faltered but didn't fade completely. "Oh, am I interrupting your collaborative delusion? My mistake."
"Say it again," Thorn said.
Her voice wasn't loud, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop all the same. Her tone was steady, almost casual. The same quiet that made people lean back without knowing why.
Shadows bled faintly at the edges of her boots, curling like smoke just shy of touching the light, just as she commanded it to. There was no threat in her posture, no raised voice, just that eerie, patient stillness. That sort of eerie calm that made people believe something terrible would happen if she stopped being calm.
"I dare you," she added softly, almost teasing.
And that, somehow, was worse.
"Thorn," Xavier murmured, not touching her but close enough.
Mrs. Vanguard paused mid-sentence, assessing the room with a weary blink.
"Mr. Greve, Ms. Rosales, unless your contributions include quantified variables, kindly save them for office hours."
"Of course, Ma'am," Marcellus said, eyes never leaving Thorn's. The smile stayed, but his jaw clicked once as he sat back.
Thorn lowered herself into the chair by inches. Her hands were very still.
Class stumbled forward. Ink scratched. Glass clinked softly. Thorn's pulse finally came down out of her ears.
Halfway through a lecture on volatility curves, a whisper at the edge of hearing snagged her attention. Marcellus leaned toward a lean boy with ink-stained fingers, their heads almost touching. Thorn angled her hearing, just enough.
"…keep Thorpe distracted," Marcellus murmured. "If he's sketching, he's not talking."
"About what?" the boy whispered.
Marcellus's lips pressed into the shape of a smile. "Exactly."
A note buzzed Thorn's phone beneath the table. One buzz, then two, frantic tempo.
Pippa: Thorn, HELP!
Pippa: Herb Lorejust went down. Not just a wolf. TWO wolves. Same class. Help.
A photo followed. It was blurred and smeared with motion. A shattered beaker. A toppled stool. A pair of hands gripping a counter too tightly, veins standing out like silver threads.
Thorn's chair scraped back so hard it startled half the class. Xavier looked up immediately, reading the alarm on her face before she said a word. She turned the screen toward him.
He swore under his breath. "Shit."
Mrs. Vanguard's voice rang out. "Ms. Rosales, sit back down." But Thorn was already halfway to the door, bag slung over her shoulder. She pushed through it anyway, ignoring the echo of her name chasing her down the hall.
Whispers rippled through the classroom as Xavier shoved his notebook shut and followed.
He caught up to her halfway down the hall, breathless. "What classroom?"
"Upstairs," she panted, taking the steps two at a time. "Pippa said Herbal Lore & Greenhouses. If the wards haven't triggered lockdown, we can still—"
The rest vanished into noise. A scream echoed from above, sharp enough to freeze Xavier and Thorn for half a second. Then they ran faster.
When they reached the corridor, the air felt wrong. It was heavy, charged as it had been in the woods. Students were pouring out of a doorway ahead, pale and shaking.
Thorn grabbed one by the arm. "What happened?"
"They just, I don't know, snapped," the girl gasped. "One minute they were fine, and then… like something got inside their heads."
Thorn pushed past her before she'd finished.
The classroom was wrecked. Tables overturned, plants shredded, and the air smelled of blood, iron, and crushed herbs.
Two werewolves crouched near the center of the room, half-shifted and twitching. Muscles spasming like they were fighting invisible restraints.
Their claws raked the tile, and their breath came in ragged, animal bursts.
The rest of the students had pressed themselves into corners, eyes wide, too scared to move.
"Everyone out!" Thorn shouted. Her voice cut through the panic like a blade. Shadows gathered at her command, stretching across the floor to herd the others toward the door.
Xavier darted to the edge of the overturned desks, scanning the room. The faint hum he'd felt in his bones since morning was stronger here, buzzing through the walls, vibrating the glass.
"Thorn," he said, low. "It's here. The resonance."
"I know," she muttered, bracing her arm against a desk. "It's pushing them over."
One of the wolves snarled, eyes flashing silver, not from light, but from something alive crawling beneath their skin. Their muscles spasmed in jagged, unnatural rhythm, as if invisible strings jerked them in and out of their bodies.
"They're being pulled," Thorn said, realization hitting like a blade through her chest. "It's not them. It's the sound. It's controlling them."
Her hands flew forward, palms open. The shadows answered instantly.
They spilled out from every corner of the room, curling from beneath the desks, dripping down the walls and shelves of herbs, and sliding out from between the floorboards.
The darkness struck fast, black tendrils snapping around the wolves' arms and torsos, coiling until they couldn't move, and then hurling them back. When they hit the wall, the impact cracked the plaster, and dust rained down in soft gray clouds.
"Call the infirmary!" Thorn shouted, her voice straining. Her eyes burned gold at the edges, and the veins in her neck pulsed faintly with the same light as her shadows.
Xavier darted toward the teacher's desk, nearly tripping on an overturned stool. The scene was chaos. Crushed plants and spilled vials of herbs danced against the tiles, the air metallic and sharp with the scent of blood and iron.
He froze for a moment. The Herb Lore professor, Mrs. Weaver, lay on the floor, half-hidden behind a cabinet. Blood had pooled beneath her head, dark and glossy. Her glasses were cracked in two.
"What the fuck?"
"Xavier!" Thorn's voice cut through the shock, sharp and desperate.
He blinked, shaking it off, forcing himself to focus. His pulse thundered in his ears, louder than the screams spilling down the hall. He snatched the phone off the desk, fingers slipping on the receiver as he pressed it to his ear.
The line clicked, then nothing. Just static.
He tried again. Another click. A faint tone. Then a high, whining feedback that made him flinch. He ripped the phone away from his ear, glaring at it like it had betrayed him.
"Come on, come on," he muttered, punching the infirmary code from the paper taped beside the phone. The numbers blurred, not from magic, but from the tremor in his hands.
"Thorn," he said, voice low and uneven. "It's not working. The line's dead."
"Well then, try something else, I can't hold them back forever!" She hissed, sweat slicking her temple. The shadows around the wolves were beginning to tear apart, threads of darkness unraveling under invisible strain. One wolf slammed forward, hitting her barrier with enough force to rattle the desks.
The lights flickered overhead, dimming until only the emergency lantern near the back of the room still burned. A low hum vibrated through the air vents, desks, and Xavier's ribs.
His gaze fell to the pencil sticking out of his pocket. The sketches in his mind flared bright, muscle memory taking over. He tore a blank sheet from his notebook and dropped to one knee beside the desk.
Think. The runes pull energy inward. A counter-sigil has to push it out. Mrs. Vanguard had mentioned it in class last week. Every rune has a counter-rune.
He began to draw, fast and deliberate, reversing each stroke from the pattern burned into his memory. Every motion carried the melody's rhythm, mirrored backward, discordant enough to fracture it.
If the symbols were a language, then he could talk back.
He started sketching, fast, the pencil moving with a frantic precision born from muscle memory and panic. His strokes mirrored the runes but inverted them. An anti-sigil, a reversed rhythm. Every line he dragged through the graphite seemed to hum, low and dangerous.
The wolves howled, thrashing harder, driven mad by a pressure no one could see. One of Thorn's shadows snapped under the strain. Her jaw clenched. A sharp sting split the bridge of her nose, and blood began to slide down over her lip, dark and thin.
The room crackled with energy, static and heat, each pulse of the unseen pressure hammering through her skull like a drumbeat.
"Whatever you're doing, Thorpe..."
"Almost," he muttered through clenched teeth, dragging the final line of the counter-sigil. The graphite caught light, humming faintly as the last curve closed into a circle. "Done."
For a breath, nothing happened. Then the air bent.
The sigil pulsed once beneath his hand, as though drawing breath. The graphite shimmered, threads of pale gold seeping through the black. A static buzz crawled across his skin, up his arm, like the paper itself was alive.
The sound hit them a heartbeat later. Low and dissonant, like a note struck on the wrong instrument somewhere far beyond the walls. The floor trembled underfoot. The air thickened, pushing down on their lungs until even breathing felt wrong. Every piece of metal in the room, desks, cabinet handles, window frames, began to hum faintly under the weight of it, singing in discordant harmony.
Thorn's shadows recoiled as the resonance met resistance, collapsing inward in a rush of cold air. The wolves screamed once and went still.
The resonance collided with Xavier's sketch like two opposing waves. A shock rippled outward, cracking the glass in the nearest cabinet and shoving dust off the shelves. Thorn gasped as her shadows recoiled violently, sinking back behind desks and bookshelves. The wolves dropped to the floor in a heap. Panting, trembling, but motionless.
Silence fell, broken only by the hum of the lights and the sound of both their breathing.
Thorn straightened slowly, her hands shaking, a smear of blood under her nose. "What... what did you just do?"
Xavier stared at the page under his hand. The graphite lines still shimmered faintly, golden-white like heat through fog. "I didn't stop it," he said softly. "I just interrupted it. Told it to leave."
The oppressive weight in the air lightened a little, but the echo remained. A cold reminder that this wasn't over.
Thorn pressed her palm against a desk, steadying herself. "You drew a counter sigil?" she asked, disbelief threading through her exhaustion.
He nodded, still catching his breath. "It's crude, but… yeah. Something like that."
"Well," she said hoarsely, pushing a lock of hair from her face, "remind me to never make fun of art therapy again."
Down the hall, the distant shout of voices reverberated against the walls. The infirmary staff finally answered the call.
The door slammed open.
Four infirmary nurses swept in, robes glinting faintly with the silver thread of containment runes stitched into their hems. The lead nurse, a broad woman with steady hands, flicked her wrist. The silver straps coiled from the air like living vines, slithering around the unconscious wolves where they lay. The metal shimmered, binding tight against their wrists and throats with a soft hiss. The smell of ozone filled the room.
"Careful," one nurse warned, voice clipped. "If they start to shift again, reinforce the straps and sedate immediately."
The second knelt beside one of the wolves, checking his pulse, then frowned. "They're stable," The nurse said quietly, "but their energy signatures are… wrong. Like something burned through them."
Thorn straightened a little too fast, her vision swimming. She wiped the back of her hand under her nose, but the streak of red was already there. The lead nurse caught it immediately.
"Miss Rosales," she said sharply, moving closer. "You're bleeding. Come with us to the infirmary for observation—"
"I'm fine," Thorn interrupted, stepping back before the woman could touch her. Her voice came out rough but steady. "They're the ones who need it."
"Protocol requires—"
"I said I'm fine." The lights overhead flickered faintly at her tone, a pulse through the fixtures that made the nurse hesitate. The woman's lips tightened, but she didn't press further.
Xavier glanced toward the far side of the room, where Mrs. Weaver lay sprawled near the overturned supply cabinet. "She's in bad shape," he said quietly, turning to the lead nurse. "You think she'll be okay?"
The nurse followed his gaze, moving briskly to where a nursemaid was already kneeling beside the teacher. The air smelled of antiseptic and iron.
"She's breathing," the nurse said after a moment, pressing two fingers to the side of Mrs. Weaver's throat. "But barely. The head wound's deep. She's lost a lot of blood."
Thorn and Xavier stood frozen where they were, the chaos unfolding around them in muffled sound. The clink of silver restraints. The low murmur of the nurses coordinating spells. Somewhere in the distance, a bell chimed, too bright for such a grim scene.
"This is a mess," Xavier muttered under his breath, jaw tightening. The words weren't angry so much as resigned. The helplessness in them hung between them like smoke.
Thorn didn't answer. Her gaze lingered on the floor, where overturned plants, desks, and herbs littered about.
When she finally looked up, Xavier was already closing his notebook, his fingers smudged with graphite and ash. The page beneath his hand was still faintly warm, pulsing once before going still.
"It's getting stronger," he murmured, more to himself than to her.
Thorn's stomach tightened. The hum in the walls hadn't disappeared; it had only gone quiet. Waiting.
She turned toward the door, shadows curling faintly around her boots.
"Come on," she said quietly, glancing back at Xavier. "We need to go back to the cemetery."
Thorn took one last look at the chaos. The overturned desks, nurses murmuring containment incantations over the wolves, the faint metallic hum vibrating in the floorboards. The room felt wrong. Too still. Like something was holding its breath.
The nurses were distracted now, their focus split between the unconscious wolves and Mrs. Weaver's limp form.
Silver light rippled through the bindings as one nurse adjusted the containment runes, muttering under her breath about energy interference. Another hurried out the door, calling for a stretcher for transportation to the infirmary.
"Now," Thorn whispered.
Xavier hesitated. "They're going to notice—"
"Not if we move fast," she cut in, voice low but firm. Her shadows twitched at her ankles like restless smoke, ready to move before she did.
She started toward the front of the room, slipping between two toppled desks where the light didn't reach. The dimness welcomed her like an old friend. When she turned, Xavier was still rooted in place, eyes darting between her and the nurses.
"Xavier," she hissed. "Come on."
He exhaled through his nose and followed, keeping low. His shoes scuffed once against the stone, earning a sharp glance from one of the nurses, but Thorn flicked her wrist, and the light above flickered. The brief stutter of brightness made the nurse pause, glance up, and then shrug it off.
In that blink, Thorn and Xavier slipped out.
The hallway was empty. The distant echo of the bell tower rolled through the corridors, low and hollow.
Thorn pressed her back to the wall, exhaling quietly. "That was too close."
"You think they'll notice?" Xavier asked.
"Eventually." She straightened, the faint smear of blood still visible beneath her nose. "But by then, we'll be long gone."
He studied her for a moment. The dark smudges under her eyes, the tremor she was pretending wasn't there, and then he finally nodded.
They didn't speak the rest of the way; they didn't need to.
The fog clung low, snagging at boots, swallowing the sound of their steps.
The gate complained as Thorn shouldered it open, then swung wide as if it recognized her.
The hum was wrong here. It was lower, slower, like a new pitch that stitched itself into the old one. Xavier felt it in his teeth. Thorn thought it was like a draft under skin that should have been sealed.
"Listen," she said, and they did. The resonance had shifted by a half-step, like a song retuned for a different throat.
There, etched into the flank of a mausoleum untouched for a century, fresh marks glittered like frost. Not chalk. Not ash.
Silver dust.
Xavier bent close. The lines were precise, almost surgical. His throat tightened. "Someone's been working here."
Thorn's mouth thinned. "Someone who knew we'd come back."
Thorn's brows furrowed slightly. There was only one person she could think of who would do something like this: the same one who wanted to keep Xavier distracted.
Xavier opened his sketchbook, matching the new sigils to the measures from last night. They slotted in too neatly. A phrase is completed. A breath taken after a held note.
Xavier's palm waved over the new drawing, just enough for the sound to scratch the air.
The earth trembled. A low, hollow groan rolled under their feet, rattling stone. From far to the south, muffled by distance and walls, a wolf howled, broken, half-feral, cut short like someone had reached into its chest and pressed down.
They stood very still.
"Okay," Xavier said quietly. "We don't do that again."
Thorn swallowed. "Agreed."
He brushed a sleeve over the silver dust. It smeared, but the shimmer clung to the stone as if it preferred it there.
"They're not improvising," he said. "They're rehearsing."
"Then the next performance will be soon." Thorn scanned the tree line, every nerve wired to flight and fight and something in between. "And closer."