Chapter 3 The Whispering Spine

The air on the third floor of North Wing always felt different-charged, like the moment before a storm breaks, with tension strung between each brick and rafter like the taut thread of a waiting harp. Caelan could taste metal in the silence, as if the hallway itself had bled memory and dared him to step forward.

He moved past the old portraits, each framed in blackened oak, their eyes following with a hunger too precise to be illusion, and as he walked, his footsteps echoed not as single sounds but as overlapping murmurs of voices that never quite spoke.

Beneath his coat, the mark on his wrist prickled again, not in pain but in recognition, as though the very walls knew what he was and were whispering their secrets in runes his body could now read.

It was near midnight and the moonlight that spilled through the arching windows was blue, not from the moon itself, but from something older that reflected it back-a sheen like oil on glass, or memory on skin.

He paused outside Room 317.

It looked like any other door, but the handle was warm.

He turned it slowly, each click of the mechanism echoing down the corridor like a spine cracking open, and as the door swung inward, he saw her.

She stood by the window, pale as salt and still as the forest's breath.

Not the girl from the chapel.

A different girl.

This one shimmered slightly, as though painted onto the air, her outline breaking at the edges where the moonlight touched her.

Caelan stepped in, careful not to blink too quickly.

"You came," she said, and her voice was the scrape of frost over ancient wood.

He said nothing.

She turned slowly, her face ageless but young, impossibly sad, and her eyes were not eyes at all but hollows filled with stars.

"You carry it," she whispered.

He glanced down at his wrist, now exposed.

The mark glowed faintly.

She reached toward him, hand trembling like a candle in wind.

"It began with me."

He flinched as her fingers passed through his skin, leaving no burn, only understanding.

In an instant he saw her death.

The rope.

The bell tower.

The silence afterward that swallowed even her name.

She had been the first.

The first what?

His mind ached with the question.

She smiled, tragic and knowing.

"Not the first to die. The first to *be chosen*."

Lightning split the sky outside, but there was no thunder.

Only the soft sound of breath being drawn behind him.

He turned.

Another girl.

Alive.

Real.

Eyes wide.

Mouth open.

Shock painted her expression, her tray of books crashing to the floor.

"You see her too," she whispered.

Caelan nodded slowly.

The ghost girl faded.

Not vanished.

Just stepped backward, into the window's reflection.

The new girl approached, cautious.

"You're new."

He nodded again.

"I'm Astra."

A name like starlight and resistance.

"Caelan."

She tilted her head, studying him.

"Most can't see her. Not without the mark."

His silence confirmed it.

She sat on the floor beside the fallen books, the pages open to diagrams of constellations and leyline channels.

"Did she tell you her name?"

He shook his head.

"No one knows it. But she appears to all who bear the mark-the first time. It's like... validation."

He crouched beside her.

"How many of us are there?"

Astra looked at the window.

The ghost girl's reflection nodded.

"More than you'd think. Fewer than we need."

Caelan felt the mark again, pulsing.

It wasn't just a scar.

It was a beacon.

"There's something under the school," Astra said suddenly, voice low.

"Something that sings in your sleep."

He didn't ask how she knew.

He'd heard it too.

Every night since arriving.

The low, lilting hum beneath his dreams.

A song without words.

A summons.

They sat in silence for a while, listening to nothing and everything.

Somewhere far below, something stirred.

Astra gathered the books slowly, her hands trembling as if she sensed the chapter turning too.

"The ones with the mark... we're not safe here," she murmured.

Caelan looked up sharply. "You mean the school is dangerous?"

She nodded, clutching a leather-bound volume to her chest. "It protects and imprisons in equal measure. The deeper you go, the harder it is to return."

A chill ran up his spine that had nothing to do with the ghost.

The ghost girl watched them from the window, now with a flicker of sorrow in her fading expression.

"It took me," her voice whispered faintly. "It will take again."

Caelan stepped back, his eyes meeting Astra's. "Why us?"

"Because we carry the seed of something old. Something it needs."

They moved out of the room together, the air behind them growing cold again, as if the space had sealed shut on a secret shared too soon.

Down the hallway, a faint bell rang.

Not the tower bell.

A smaller one.

Hidden.

Calling.

Caelan and Astra exchanged a look and without a word began to follow the sound, deeper into the North Wing.

Past the arches that had been cordoned off.

Beyond the wards carved in forgotten tongues.

With each step, the mark on Caelan's wrist pulsed stronger, not just guiding but warning.

They passed a locked gate that groaned open for them without a touch.

A staircase spiraled downward, cloaked in vines and iron.

Astra hesitated, but he descended first.

The walls whispered names he didn't recognize but somehow remembered.

Below, in the belly of the school, old things stirred.

A pool of still water reflected not their faces, but their shadows walking ahead of them.

At the center of the chamber was a stone circle, etched with lunar glyphs.

Astra reached for his hand and placed it at the circle's center.

Light spilled upward in a bloom of silver fire.

And then the song returned.

Full.

Alive.

Hungry.

Caelan didn't pull away.

He let the light take him.

Let the knowledge flow.

Let the ancient thing speak through the mark.

When the song ended, they were not the same.

Astra's eyes gleamed with moons that weren't in the sky.

And Caelan's mark was no longer a glow.

It had become a wound.

A door.

And something was coming through.