Chapter 5 Whispers in the Stone

Wren's POV

Most people don't notice walls. They pass them, decorate them, lean on them, sometimes walk into them after too little sleep and too much coffee, but they don't listen to them.

I do now, but it all started with a whisper.

A soft hum behind my ear like breath on skin, except I was alone. Not the "I think I'm alone" kind of alone, no, this was proper, echo-in-an-empty-hallway, ghost-of-last-semester s-lunch alone, and yet, there it was.

Whispering.

At first, I thought I was just overtired, maybe the weirdness of this place had finally scrambled my brain into Vein-flavored oatmeal. But the whispers kept coming, always when I was near a stone, always in that same soft rhythm, like something was remembering me.

And okay, yeah, it probably sounded insane, cause it did even in my head.

So I didn't tell anyone, not Callie, not the hyper-curious alchemy assistant who kept trying to "accidentally" trip over my notes, and not Theo "Emotionally Unavailable and Weirdly Attractive" Marris.

Especially not him.

Instead, I followed the pull.

Every time I passed certain stairwells, certain stone-wrapped corridors, I felt... tugged. Like there was a string behind my ribs, someone kept tugging, and on the fourth morning of this nonsense, I let it lead me.

Down.

Silvergrove Academy is mostly polished and regal aboveground, with arched ceilings, stained glass windows, and velvet drapes that somehow never collect dust. But below that?

Below that is where the air turns colder and the light forgets what color means.

I found a tucked-away stairwell hidden behind a dusty tapestry. It looked like it hadn't been disturbed in years, but the dust was disturbed with footprints, small ones, my size too.

Either I had a twin no one told me about, or I'd been here before in my sleep, which felt alarmingly plausible.

I descended with the grace of a startled goat without a torch or lantern, just the faint glow of the stone itself, lit by nothing I could see. There was no reason for it to be beautiful, but it was, and the deeper I went, the more the walls shimmered with veins of silver like frost threading through glass.

The whispers grew louder.

Not words, not exactly, it was more like... emotion translated into sound. That same curiosity, hunger, and recognition I had been going on about in my head for some time.

My skin buzzed like I was standing too close to lightning, and something pulsed beneath the soles of my boots, not a minute later.

Then I saw it.

A door, but it wasn't a regular door.

This one wasn't built, it had grown out of the wall itself, its edges traced in ancient runes that shimmered faintly like breaths on a cold transparent surface. And it was humming, soft and low, like it was waiting for something.

My hand reached out before I could think.

I expected it to be cold, but it wasn't, it was warm. Not comforting warm but fever-warm, like something alive, something watching, something remembering. My fingers grazed the surface-

And the world exploded.

A shock tore through me, searing from my palm down my spine like lightning wrapped in a scream. My knees hit the stone, breath gone, vision whiting out, as the whispers stopped.

No, they screamed.

And then nothing.

I came to with a groan and someone muttering my name, which made me realise that I had fainted in this area that could have been packed with dangerous traps.

"Wren, wren, don't...hey, stay awake."

Theo, of course, it was Theo.

I blinked up at him, his face hovering over mine with a mix of annoyance and something else. Concern? Disbelief? Existential horror? He should just take his pick and lead with it.

"Did you follow me?" I rasped.

"You left a trail even a blind wolf could follow." He crouched beside me, checking my pulse like he had any medical training at all. "What were you doing down here?"

"Making new friends," I said, wincing as I sat up. "Rock walls and whispering doors. You know, normal freshman girl things."

He didn't laugh, and it didn't come as a surprise that he wasn't.

Instead, he stared at the still-glowing door like it had personally offended him. "You touched it?"

"I think it touched me first."

He exhaled sharply, standing. "You shouldn't be down here or in this area. That door is not meant to open for anyone, not anymore."

"Then why did it respond to me?"

His jaw tightened, and for a second, I thought he might actually answer.

But instead, he turned. "Come on, you're freezing."

I wanted to argue, I always want to argue, but he wasn't wrong. My teeth were chattering, my limbs were shaking like leaves, and beneath it all was a deep ache in my chest, like something ancient had crawled inside me and was still waking up.

He helped me up, arm under mine in a way that made my brain short-circuit a little. He was warm, infuriatingly solid, and also smelled like cloves and cold air.

We walked back in silence with no further explanations and no apologies.

But that night, as I stared at the ceiling of my room with Callie snoring softly in the bed beside mine, I saw something in the mirror that made me sit bolt upright.

For just a second, barely a flicker, my eyes weren't mine or at least the ones I had come to know.

They were silver.