Aiden woke before the bell.
That alone was wrong.
Sanctum Academy always decided when you opened your eyes.
The bells were ancient like that, heavy, absolute, final. They rang, and the day began. They didn't ring, and nothing moved.
But his eyes snapped open anyway.
The ceiling above him felt farther away than usual, as if the room had inhaled during the night and forgotten how to exhale. Pale morning light slid through the tall window, cutting the stone floor into sharp angles. Dust hung in the air, unmoving. Waiting.
Aiden lay still.
He listened.
No voices.
No singing.
No echo of the Choir's hymn crawling through his skull.
And yet,
Something was off.
When he sat up, the world lagged. Not enough to call it dizziness. Just a fraction of a second where his body moved and reality followed behind, like it needed permission. He pressed his palm to his chest, feeling his heartbeat,steady, human, stubbornly normal.
Too normal.
His gaze drifted to the floor.
A white feather rested near the foot of his bed.
Perfect. Unburned. Unbroken.
It shouldn't have been there.
Aiden stared at it for a long moment, then laughed under his breath.
A quiet, humorless sound. Sanctum Academy was full of illusions, tricks of the light, symbolic nonsense meant to unsettle first-years. He knew that. Everyone did.
Still, he didn't touch the feather.
He stood instead, crossing the cold stone floor to the mirror mounted beside his wardrobe. The glass caught him mid-step, and for a heartbeat, it showed him someone else.
Not different.
Just… wrong.
His reflection flickered.
Behind his head, just barely there, a thin ring of fractured gold shimmered into existence. Cracked. Crooked. Incomplete.
A halo.
Aiden sucked in a sharp breath.
The image vanished instantly. The mirror returned to normal, showing only a tired student with dark circles under his eyes and hair that refused to obey gravity. He leaned closer, searching his own face for proof that he hadn't imagined it.
Nothing.
But the space behind his head burned. Not pain, memory. A pressure where something used to rest. Where something still believed it belonged.
He stepped back.
I'm awake, he told himself. This is real. This is just, aftereffects.
That word tasted like a lie.
Outside, the bells finally rang.
The sound rolled through the academy halls, deep and resonant, vibrating through stone and bone alike. Students began to stir beyond his door, footsteps, murmurs, the ordinary rhythm of morning returning like nothing had happened.
Like no song had been sung.
Aiden dressed in silence. As he fastened his uniform, he noticed faint ash smudged along his sleeve. He brushed at it automatically.
The ash did not fall away.
His fingers paused.
Last night's memories surfaced in fragments, stained glass glowing like embers, shadows arranged in a perfect circle, voices that weren't voices pressing against his thoughts.
They remembered him.
The feather on the floor trembled.
Not from wind.
Not from sound.
From him.
Aiden stepped back, heart hammering now, and the feather stilled. The room felt suddenly smaller, heavier, as if unseen eyes had turned in his direction.
Whatever had followed him out of the Lower Sanctum had not left.
It hadn't needed to.
It was already inside the walls.
Aiden reached for the door, hesitating only once before opening it.
The hallway looked the same as always, long, solemn, unforgiving. Students passed him without a second glance. No one stared. No one whispered.
And yet, as he stepped into the corridor, a single thought settled into his chest, cold and certain:
The Choir had called.
And mornings like this were never accidents
The Girl Who Knew the Hymn
The library was never silent.
It only pretended to be.
Pages turned like whispered confessions. Candles breathed softly in their iron holders. Somewhere deep between the shelves, old wood creaked as if remembering every hand that had ever touched it.
Aiden took refuge there because places with memory made his head feel less alone.
He sat at a long oak table near the east windows, books spread open in front of him, unread. Light filtered through stained glass, staining his hands in blues and golds that didn't quite stay still. Every few minutes, he felt it again, that pressure behind his head.
That phantom weight.
Like something missing.
"You're sitting in the wrong light."
Her voice was calm. Not accusing. Not surprised.
Aiden looked up.
She stood across from him, framed by the tall shelves like she belonged there. Pale hair fell loose around her shoulders, catching the sun until it almost glowed. Her uniform was worn properly, precisely, but she wore it like ceremony, not obligation.
He had seen her before.
Of course he had.
Sanctum Academy remembered everyone.
"You'll get a headache if you stay there too long," she continued, as if they were already in the middle of a conversation.
Aiden closed the book in front of him. "And you are?"
She smiled, faint and unreadable. "Someone who knows what that light does."
She moved closer, her steps soundless on the stone floor. He noticed, distantly, that the air shifted around her, warmer, softer, like standing too close to a candle.
She stopped across from him.
Close enough.
Too close.
"You were in the Lower Sanctum," she said quietly.
Aiden's fingers tightened on the edge of the table. "That place is off-limits."
"So are a lot of truths," she replied. "Doesn't stop them from existing."
He studied her face now,really studied it. There was something old in her eyes. Not tired. Not broken.
Remembering.
"Who are you?" he asked again.
"Seraphine Vale."
The name settled between them like a held breath.
She tilted her head slightly. "They sang to you, didn't they?"
Aiden stood so abruptly his chair scraped the floor. Several heads turned. The librarian coughed pointedly.
Seraphine didn't flinch.
"You shouldn't say things like that," he hissed.
"I shouldn't," she agreed. "But they already did."
His pulse thundered. "You don't know what you're talking about."
She leaned in just enough for only him to hear.
"Kyrie eleison," she whispered.
Mercy.
The word struck him like a bell rung too close to the ear. His vision blurred for half a second, the library stretching, bending. He smelled ash. Heard distant harmony.
He grabbed the table to steady himself.
Seraphine straightened immediately.
"Easy," she said softly. "I won't say the rest."
"The rest of what?"
"The hymn," she replied. "The part that seals the call."
Aiden swallowed. "Why do you know this?"
Her gaze flicked briefly to the stained-glass window above theman angel with cracked wings, light spilling through the fractures.
"Because once," she said, "they sang to me too."
Silence stretched between them. Thick. Alive.
"What happens now?" Aiden asked.
Seraphine met his eyes, and for the first time, something like fear crossed her face.
"Now," she said, "you stop pretending this is a coincidence."
She stepped back, giving him space he hadn't realized he needed.
"Be careful, Aiden," she added.
He stiffened. "I never told you my name."
She paused at the end of the aisle, looking over her shoulder.
"No," she said. "But they did."
Then she was gone, slipping between the shelves, swallowed by shadow and candlelight, leaving behind the faint scent of incense and something sharper.
Like ozone after a storm.
Aiden sank back into his chair, heart racing.
One truth rang clear above the rest:
The Choir had not only called him.
It had witnesses.