Lyre started bathing more often.
Not because she liked being clean. But because of… that smell.
That smell—the iron tang that clung to her skin like a stain that would never wash away—haunted her every time she closed her eyes. It didn't come from the outside. It came from within. From the deepest, darkest part of her being, where no light ever reached.
She sat in the cold bathwater, holding the seventh bar of soap that day, scrubbing her skin layer by layer, as if trying to peel off everything that made her human.
> "Not clean… still not clean… the stench is still there…"
She repeated it like a broken refrain. Each word that fell from her lips trembled with a feverish intensity boiling beneath her flesh.
Once, blood started to drip into the water.
Her skin peeled off in reddened patches from the force of her scrubbing. But she didn't stop.
> "Still not clean… that smell is still here…"
---
Outside, fear quietly spread through the academy.
It began with the sudden disappearance of Lia Elnave, a second-year student of the Light Division. One of the very few who had ever willingly spoken to Lyre. She vanished on a rainy night—the window flung wide open, the candle burned down to the base, and a single scorched shoe remained on the floor.
The last time anyone saw Lia… was under the west hallway. A place with no mirrors.
> "She said: 'I saw myself… smiling. I've never smiled like that before.'"
---
When the second person vanished—Talb Menrot, a first-year in the same division—the academy finally began to tremble.
He was the one who had called Lyre names. "The burning witch." "Cold-blooded lunatic."
His bed was found with the blanket shredded. His desk was carved with fingernail scratches:
> "She doesn't sleep. She watches me through the mirror. She knows."
---
Fear spread like fire to dry grass.
No one said it aloud, but everyone knew: every student who vanished had interacted with Lyre.
---
And Lyre said nothing.
She didn't deny. She didn't admit. She only whispered one word each time someone passed by her door:
> "Knock…"
A sound that pierced the skull. Gentle as a lullaby, but buried itself into the listener's mind like a silent scream. No one knew what it meant. But after hearing it, no one dared to turn around—especially near the north hallway, where the lights flickered like something unseen had touched them.
---
Geal felt helpless.
He would often watch Lyre through the classroom door—where she sat motionless, never taking notes, never looking at anyone. But now… her eyes were hollow. As if her soul had been peeled away, leaving only a body that remembered how to move.
He began to hear faint knocks at night. Not the wind. Not rats.
Rhythmic knocking—three times. Then silence. Then again.
> Knock… Knock… Knock…
He tried to talk to her, but she always looked away.
---
On the fifth day, Lyre didn't come to class.
Geal was worried—she hadn't returned to her room in five days either.
When he opened her door, she was already there.
The room felt colder, as if her very presence chilled the air.
Lyre sat in the center of the room, soaked through, hair clinging to her face, her eyes no longer reflecting any light.
She smiled at Geal. But that smile… wasn't meant for a human.
> "Do you hear it?"
> "Hear… what…?
> "They're knocking. From the other side. I didn't call them. But they came."
Then she raised her hand—her skin torn in patches from clawing at herself.
> "I tried to wash it off. But blood doesn't clean. It said I have to remember. I have to open the door."
> "What door, Lyre?"
> "The one beneath the mirror. Where the reflection isn't you anymore."
Then she collapsed. Geal carried her to the bed, hoping something—anything—could erase what had happened.
---
Three more students disappeared that night.
The entire academy descended into panic. The faculty held an emergency meeting. Whispers began—something was rising from beneath the fabric of reality. Something that did not belong to this world.
And all signs pointed in one direction.
---
Geal sat at the council table, eyes sunken from sleepless nights, hands clenched beneath the wood.
Outside the window, rain fell without end. A flash of lightning lit up the sky—and in that brief moment, he saw it.
A figure on the academy roof.
Face lifted to the sky. Hair whipping in the wind. Eyes locked onto his.
It was Lyre.
And from deep within his chest, Geal heard a whisper coil around his ears like a snake:
> Knock… Knock… Knock…