The book slammed shut.
The sound wasn't loud.
It was final—like the academy had just closed a file on their lives.
For one heartbeat, every mirror in the library went dark.
No reflections.
No false smiles.
No shimmering routes.
Just black glass and the sensation of something enormous turning its attention toward the surface.
Then the floor beneath Lina's feet thumped again.
A deep, living удар—like a heart beating under stone.
Kai's hand tightened around hers hard enough to anchor pain into reality.
"Don't answer," he whispered, voice raw. "No matter what it says."
Lina's throat was tight, breath shallow. She could still feel the way the voice had spoken her name—perfect, intimate, ancient. Like it didn't recognize her as a student.
Like it recognized her as a key.
Seren stood frozen, eyes blazing silver. "It knows your resonance signature," she whispered. "Not just your name. Your… shape."
Mira clutched Lina's sleeve, trembling. "Lina, I— I can't hear my own thoughts."
Reyon's gaze flicked across the mirrors like he was afraid they'd start moving again. "I vote we leave the haunted library immediately and never return."
Jax swallowed hard, pale as chalk. "There's a door—there has to be—"
The mirrors shivered.
Not from illusion.
From pressure.
A thin crack spidered across one panel—then another—like the glass couldn't hold what was pressing from below.
Kai's shadowsteel ripple sharpened. "Move."
They ran.
Not down the aisle where the mirrors were angled inward like a ritual circle—Kai steered them along the outer edge, where shelves made shadows, where reflections were harder to catch.
"Don't look in the mirror," Kai said, automatic as breathing.
"I'm not!" Reyon snapped, then immediately added, "I mean— I'm trying not to. The mirrors are everywhere. It's a hostile environment."
Seren grabbed Mira's wrist tighter. "Stay with me. Say your name."
Mira blinked rapidly. "Mira Sun."
"Again."
"Mira Sun."
Seren's voice shook. "Stay real."
"I'm here," Mira whispered, and her breath came out like she was fighting to remain in her own body.
Lina's chest tightened. She tried to remember the sound of Mira's laugh again—tried to force it back into existence.
Blank.
A hole shaped like joy.
Mirror Tax didn't just take things.
It left silence behind.
They reached the Umbral door.
It was still there—stone and crest and faint runes like sleeping chains.
Kai slammed his palm to the symbol. "Umbral—open."
Nothing.
The crest didn't flare.
Didn't recognize.
Didn't care.
Lina felt it immediately—her skin prickling as the ward scanned them.
Kai was accepted.
Seren was accepted.
Reyon… hesitated, then accepted.
Mira flickered—🕯️ fighting witness memory—then accepted.
And Lina—
Nothing.
Kai swore under his breath. "No."
The door stayed shut.
Seren's eyes widened. "She's still VOID."
"But Jax witnessed her," Mira whispered. "It worked."
Jax's voice cracked. "It did—I said her name—"
Lina's ribs burned with the familiar pen-scratch sensation.
She understood with a sick, sharp clarity:
Jax's witness oath had pulled her back—
but the library had immediately re-classified her.
Not student.
Not intruder.
Something worse.
A category that didn't require doors to open.
A category the academy wanted to contain.
Kai turned to Lina, fury and fear flickering in his eyes. "Say your name."
Lina forced breath. "Lina Veris."
"Again."
"Lina Veris."
"Stay real."
"I'm here," Lina whispered.
For a heartbeat, the Umbral crest flickered.
Almost.
Then—behind them—one mirror panel lit again.
Not showing reflections.
Showing a moving map of the corridor outside.
The Founder's Atlas had followed them.
Ink writhed across the glass like a living panic.
Routes highlighted. Then erased. Then highlighted again—contradicting itself.
Reyon stared. "It's… crashing."
Seren whispered, voice hoarse. "It's lying and panicking. Veilbound are everywhere."
The map jerked, and a cluster of black ink bloomed across the hall outside the library like spilled tar.
Veilbound signatures.
Closing.
And then the ink cluster did something else—something Seren's Soul Echo responded to with a full-body flinch.
A second kind of mark appeared:
Nightfall.
A jagged glyph like a mouth.
Seren gasped. "They're breaching. Right now."
Mira's voice went thin. "Nightfall creatures? In the school?"
Kai's jaw clenched. "In daylight."
Another thump shook the floor.
The mirrors around them trembled again—and one of the cracks widened, exhaling a cold breath that smelled like burnt paper and wet stone.
A whisper slid through the crack.
Not the Veilbound's whisper.
Deeper.
Older.
It didn't call Lina's name this time.
It spoke inside her bones like an echo that had always lived there:
Answer me.
Lina's vision blurred for a second.
She felt her Seventh Flame surge—instinctive, hungry, responding like a lock recognizing a key.
Kai's grip tightened violently. "Lina—don't."
Lina swallowed, shaking. "I'm not—"
The Umbral door suddenly flared.
Not because it recognized Lina.
Because it recognized Kai's shadowsteel as a containment override.
The crest lit up like a warning.
EMERGENCY ORDER PROTOCOL: UMBRAL LOCKDOWN
The door opened—
—and the hallway outside was chaos.
Students in crested robes sprinted past, faces pale. Order banners pulsed overhead, their symbols glowing like the academy was sorting bodies mid-disaster.
A Guardian statue stomped into place, sealing a corridor with rune-chains.
A girl in Ember colors screamed as a Nightfall creature crawled out of a shadow seam in the wall—ink-black, too many joints, wearing the shape of her worst fear.
The creature turned its head and whispered in her mother's voice.
She froze.
It lunged.
Kai yanked Lina through the doorway, pulling the whole group into the Umbral corridor and slamming the door behind them.
The door clicked.
Locked.
Contained.
And Lina realized the terrifying truth as the corridor's runes flared in a circle around her:
The academy wasn't trying to keep the Nightfall out.
It was trying to keep her in.
Seren's eyes widened, Soul Echo blooming into horror. "It's centering the lockdown on you."
Reyon swallowed hard. "Because the cage knows your name."
Jax's voice broke. "What do we do?"
Kai looked at Lina—steady, furious, terrified—and brought his forehead almost to hers without crossing the line into a kiss.
Touch anchors.
He held her like a tether refusing to snap.
"Say my name," Kai whispered.
Lina's breath hitched. "Kai Rhen."
"Stay real."
"I'm here," Kai said—then his voice dropped, deadly calm. "And I'm not letting the academy choose for you again."
The corridor's shadows rippled.
A final tremor rolled through the stone.
And on the mirror-map that had followed them—on the Founder's Atlas itself—ink wrote one new line in brutal, clear script directly beneath Lina's smudged entry:
MESSAGE FROM BELOW:ANSWER ME.
Lina stared at the words as her bones burned with the urge to respond.
And in the darkness of the Umbral route, something beneath the academy listened—patient, hungry—waiting for a single syllable.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.