The fog had turned the quad into a black hole. No crickets. No wind. Even the bells seemed to think better of it. Normally, they chimed every hour, on the hour. Now they just loomed in the sky, begging for normalcy to return.
"Romantic," Thorn murmured, her cloak pulled close as they slipped out of the North Wing. "If your idea of romance is hypothermia and trespassing."
"Careful, Rosales," Xavier said, keeping pace. "You're two adjectives away from my ideal date."
"Tragic," she said, but the word came out softer than she meant.
They cut along the cloisters, their footsteps dampened to thuds. Every lit window watched like an eye too tired to blink. When they reached the chapel, its doors sat closed beneath a mosaic of saints and storms, an iron latch rimed with dew and rust.
Xavier tried the handle; it held fast. "Of course," he breathed. "God loves a boundary."
"Good thing I don't love boundaries, or God." Thorn lifted a hand. The shadow at her feet unspooled, thin as spilled ink, slipping across stone and up the seam of the doors. The latch then clicked, quietly and unwillingly. Even the hinges answered with a low groan that sounded a lot like a warning.
Xavier angled her a look as he eased the door. "You know that was like... crazy illegal."
"So I've been told," she said and stepped inside.
The chapel air had its own weather. It was cool and faintly vibrating, as if a far-off organ held a note and never stopped. Dust hung in the nave, drifting on currents neither of them could feel. Stained glass washed the pews in old wine and tarnished gold.
Xavier's gaze stayed on Thorn, watching to make sure that she didn't panic like she had in the forest. She had assumed he didn't notice; he never mentioned the way her eyes flashed with pure terror, but he had seen that look before. More times than he had ever wanted to admit.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," Thorn paused to look over at him, brow arched. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Xavier thought about telling her the truth. That the last time the world went this quiet, he'd watched her go white as bone in the trees. That her hands were shaking violently against the bark. The words rose, hot and clumsy, but stalled when he saw the set of her shoulders: chin up, spine straight, eyes narrowed.
He let the words die slowly on his tongue. Pushing would only turn that steel on him, and he knew that this wasn't the time to start a fight.
"Just wanted to make sure," Xavier took a step forward toward the altar. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out his phone, and turned on the flashlight. The bright, white light stretched out in front of them.
Circular carvings haloed its base with whorled rings, tight spirals, and narrow clefts like notches on a tuning key. Xavier knelt, sketchbook already half open. "Wait."
Thorn stayed alert while Xavier mapped the stone, her own phone's light sliding over the carvings against the walls like a slow sweep of moonlight. The air tasted old like dust with the tang of static.
After a minute, he sat back on his heels, graphite smudged along his thumb. "It's one of the diagrams," he said, frowning down at the sketch. "The same geometry that's in the Mercier journal. The nested circles, the uneven patterning."
Thorn squinted. "Translation, Einstein?"
"It's not decoration," he said, glancing up. "It's a layout. Maybe a map. Or… a key?"
She crouched beside him, the beam of her phone crossing his page before shifting to the carvings again.
Thorn reached her hand out to call a small shadow under the forgotten potted plant in the corner. The miniature ripple of darkness slithered against the floor at her command. The shadow brushed one of the outer rings. Nothing more than just a graze, but the stone pulsed faintly under it.
Both of them froze.
A faint line of light threaded through the floor, tracing the circle's edge like a vein finding its heartbeat. Then, slowly, the seam between the stones split.
"Uh," Xavier muttered, scrambling backward.
The grinding sound rolled through the chapel, low and steady. A slab of floor slid aside, revealing a narrow spiral staircase that descended into darkness. Cold air rose from below, sharp and metallic, carrying the smell of rain on iron.
The hum they'd felt all night deepened, vibrating through their ribs. Not louder. But it was closer.
Thorn leaned forward, peering down into the opening. "Well," she said under her breath. "This is your last chance to admit that this is a terrible idea."
"It was always a terrible idea."
They went anyway.
The steps were worn in the middle, as if feet had practiced fear there for a century. Their shoulders brushed damp stone. The chapel's colored dark bled away, replaced by the low, metallic scent of somewhere that had forgotten the sky.
The stairs opened into a room that had once been larger. A rib of collapsed ceiling cut it in half, leaving a fan of broken masonry across the floor. Even so, the shape of it remained.
"A rehearsal hall?"
"or something that wanted to be one."
Marble workstations ringed the walls. Tuners and forks sat in nests of dust. Obsidian where you'd have expected silver, copper where iron should be. Every tool is chosen to avoid a particular resonance. Wave-etched runes rippled along the stone like the ghost of water.
In the center lay a shallow basin, cracked along its diameter. The residue inside was the color of mercury left in the rain. It was dulled to a pewter sheen, still faintly reflective. It remembered light without loving it.
Xavier paused for a moment, "Huh."
Thorn narrowed her eyes. "What?"
"Nevermore had a meeting place, too," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "An atrium under the library. Secret door. Trap plate. Latin that no one could translate but everyone pretended to understand."
Thorn frowned. "What the hell were you doing down there, holding séances?"
"Basically." He dragged a hand through his hair, sighing. "They were this old outcast society. Founded centuries ago, they were supposed to 'protect the misunderstood' and 'preserve equality between normies and monsters.' Noble on paper. But by the time I was there, it was mostly rich kids playing secret club in floor-length robes and party store masks."
Thorn blinked. "So, like a gothic frat?"
"Exactly," Xavier said dryly. "Minus the beer pong, plus way more brooding."
She tried to bite back her smirk. "Let me guess, you were one of them?"
He dragged a hand through his hair, looking like he regretted existing.
"Yeah. Back when I thought being in a secret society made me deep. Wednesday even called me an arrogant snob about it once."
"Harsh," Thorn said. "But she was right, wasn't she?"
He nodded slowly. "Back then? Unfortunately, yes."
Thorn's smile widened. "Don't worry, Thorpe. At least this time, you picked a cult with better lighting."
Xavier glanced around the chamber. The cracked marble, the rusted instruments, the faint hum that crawled along the walls. "Yeah," he said.
"And a much higher risk of death."
"Wouldn't be Reichenbach without it," she said, deadpan.
Thorn drifted toward the basin. Her reflection bled into multiple images before she reached it. One, three, then five, each a hair out of time with the others. One turned its head a fraction too far, vertebrae in a sequence her body didn't know.
Xavier caught her sleeve and yanked her back. A soft ripple crossed the surface of the dried mercury, as if disappointed.
"Don't," he said, sharper than he meant to.
Thorn blinked at him, thrown by the urgency in his voice. "You think it's dangerous?"
"I think anything that looks that curious about you probably is," he said, keeping his distance. "Reflections shouldn't move first."
Her brow furrowed. "What do you think it does?"
He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes still on the basin. "I don't know. But I've seen stuff like it before. Nevermore used to have a light in the Nightshade atrium that pulled light to mess with intruders. This feels… worse."
"How so?"
"It's not trying to blind you," he said slowly. "It's trying to learn you. Like it's… painting back."
Thorn's gaze lingered on the basin. "Painting back," she repeated under her breath, like she was tasting the words.
Then, before Xavier could stop her, her hand shifted slightly, pulling at the darkness pooled under the altar. It was subtle. Nothing more than a slight tremor of shadow uncoiling and stretching across the floor toward the basin like smoke dragged by a breath.
"Thorn," he warned.
"I'm not touching it," she said, her tone calm, almost distracted. "Just seeing if it touches back."
The pulled shadow brushed the basin's rim. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the reflections rippled. Each version of her head turned sharply toward her, as if aware of the touch. The smallest one smiled.
Thorn flinched, the tether snapping. The shadows recoiled like a rubber band, darting back to the corners of the room.
"Fuck that," she said, voice tight. "Definitely cursed."
Xavier exhaled slowly, unimpressed. "You keep doing that, and I'm bringing a spray bottle."
"Relax," she shot back, shaking out her hands, "Just wanted to see if it flinched first."
"It didn't."
"Exactly," she said quietly, "That's what worries me..."
She slowly turned to face Xavier, "Why would the Chapel ever need something like this?" she asked.
"Maybe they forgot it was here?"
Xavier wanted to give the school the benefit of the doubt, that maybe they had just forgotten about the Chapel years ago and never bothered to clean out its residual magic.
Thorn knew better.
Her jaw tightened, the words coming out low. "No. Places like this don't get forgotten. They get buried."
Xavier frowned. "Buried?"
She nodded once, eyes still on the basin. "You don't hide something this powerful unless you're afraid of what it remembers."
"Or who remembers it," she continued.
The way she said it made Xavier's skin crawl. He turned, sweeping the flashlight across the far wall. The beam caught carvings half-swallowed by dust. Lines of musical notation curling into themselves, the shapes almost moving when the light from his phone passed over.
"Thorn," he murmured. "You might want to see this."
She joined him, crouching beside the wall. The carved notes looked familiar. Wrongly familiar. Each measure was etched with narrow, precise sigils that pulsed faintly as the light moved.
Thorn traced her fingers an inch above them, careful not to touch before the realization dawned on her.
"They're not just notes," she said quietly. "These are the same runes from the journal. The same ones that burned into Danny's skin."
Along the far wall, the carvings changed. The flowing wave-patterns sharpened into lines. Musical staff marks etched deep into the stone. Notes marched across them in precise, deliberate patterns, like someone had tried to score a hymn straight into the rock itself.
But the deeper Thorn looked, the less it resembled music. Some of the bars bent into symbols instead of notes. Spirals and hooks that looked almost like runes pretending to be melody. Beneath it all, another script wound through the base of the wall, looping endlessly in a circle. The same symbol appeared repeatedly, like a seal.
Thorn's stomach turned. "That's not just writing," she murmured. "It's their mark. The Minstrels left this here on purpose."
She pulled out her phone, angling for a few shots that wouldn't glare in the low light. "We'll forget half of this by morning."
Xavier crouched beside her, frowning at the strange, looping staves. "Looks more like an algebra problem than music."
"It's both," Thorn said softly, tracing the air just above the carved lines. "See the measures?"
He leaned closer, eyes narrowing. "Those aren't beginner runes."
"No," Thorn said quietly. "Whoever carved this knew exactly what they were doing."
Thorn hummed one of the lowest pitches under her breath. It was quiet, cautious. The sound hung between them a second too long.
Then the wall answered.
It didn't echo. It sang back, the tone slightly off, sharper, glassier. Like they were hearing her own voice through someone else's throat.
The air trembled. Dust slipped from the ceiling.
Xavier's breath caught, his gaze turning towards the ceiling where the dust had fallen. "What the hell was that?"
Thorn swallowed hard. "Feedback," she said, though her voice was shaking.
He reached for his sketchbook automatically, sketching a single bar to keep his hands steady. The graphite line vibrated faintly on the page, like static caught in paper grain.
"Okay," she whispered. "So it remembers sound."
He looked up at her. "Remembers it or repeats it?"
Neither of them spoke after that. The silence pressed in, thick and waiting.
The ceiling groaned. Dust skittered from the cracked vault above and scattered across the floor like a spoonful of salt. A fist-sized rock loosed from the rib of rubble and struck near her boot.
Xavier flinched, causing them both to take a step back. "Okay, the science portion is concluded. Let's get the fuck out of here."
"We can get more," Thorn said, eyeing a progression at the wall's edge. "The notation matches the pattern on Danny's if we—"
"Thorn." He tipped his head up toward the faultline, where mortar powdered in slow, unhappy threads. "If we push too hard, the room will push back. You almost died from a garlic attack just a few days ago, and you almost passed out in the infirmary hallway while talking to Danny. I'm not about to dig you out of a choir grave because you're too stubborn to know when to leave."
Thron's jaw clenched. She hated that he was right. She hated how her breath was already a fraction too thin, how the hum under her sternum had become an ache.
For a second, she looked like she might argue out of obligation, or habit, even she couldn't tell. Then her shoulders fell a degree.
"Fine," she said, "But I'm taking more pictures before we leave." She finished her photos fast, her thumb pressing the camera icon on her screen over and over to capture the writing.
They retraced the way they'd come. The stairwell's air felt thinner, as if the room had quietly decided it wasn't fond of letting them go.
The altar resealed with a slow, patient shift, stone kissing stone. Moonlight broke the stained glass into panes of washed-out ruby and old gold, the colors dusting the air between them as if they'd been painted on a breath.
Thorn adjusted her sleeve so her hands had something to do. The tremor didn't stop; it just learned to hide. The hum in her chest had thinned to a thread, a vibration waiting for someone to pluck it again.
They looked at the altar the same way other students had looked at them in the academy halls.
Outside, the fog had climbed. It coiled around gargoyles, making their snarls look like exhaled warnings. The quad's lamps stood at careful distances, small domes of pale light on a restless sea. No one suggested splitting up. They fell into step without discussing it, boots ticking the same rhythm across the stones.
Halfway back, Xavier glanced sideways. "When you hummed," he said, low, as if he was afraid the chapel still had a piece of their conversation in its teeth, "it sounded… double like the room was mimicking you, or trying you on for size."
Thorn kept her eyes forward. "Then we should assume it knows our sizes."
"Great," he said, dry, "Tailored hauntings. Exactly what we needed."
They reached the looming towers of the North Wing.
Warm rectangles of light turned the windows into promises. A faint thread of noise drifted out — laughter, a door slamming, the sharp trace of weed in the air. The school's ordinary chaos.
Thorn slowed at the steps.
"This is way bigger than us, you know," she said, almost to the fog. There was no drama in it, only the quiet relief of saying something true.
"Yeah," Xavier said. He didn't try to dress it up as a vow. He didn't say we'll fix it. He just stood beside her until the air felt like air again.
They moved toward the door together. Somewhere behind them, the chapel kept breathing.
They'd barely turned the corner when a voice cut through the quiet.
"Mr. Thorpe. Ms. Rosales."
Professor Kaczmarski, or Professor K, stood at the end of the corridor, arms folded, expression carved in disapproval. "What are you two doing out so late after curfew?"
They froze.
Xavier's brain scrambled for an excuse, something halfway believable, something that wouldn't make its way to Maren or, worse, his father.
Before he could speak, another voice came from down the hall.
"I've got it from here, Raymond."
Ms. Alarie emerged from her quarters, hair in curlers, robe loosely tied. She gave them both a look that could silence a confession. "You should check on that noise complaint from room 302. I'm sure those boys would listen to you over me."
Professor K frowned, turning toward her. "302 again? You'd think they'd have learned by now."
"What can I say?" Alarie sighed, arms folding over her chest. "Freshmen and freedom? It's a dangerous mix."
He grumbled under his breath and pulled his robe tighter. "Alright, I'll handle it."
With that, he disappeared up the stairs, his footsteps fading up towards the third-floor corridor.
Only when he was gone did Alarie turn back to Thorn and Xavier. The curlers bobbed slightly as she rubbed her brow with her fingers.
"You two need to be more careful," she said quietly.
Thorn's jaw tightened. "We were out there because of the journal you gave us."
"I'm aware," Alarie said. "But some of the staff are starting to talk. You need to keep a better cover story."
"Like what?" Xavier asked.
"Archival duty," she said after a pause, "It'll get you into the restricted wing of the library, and no one will question why."
Thorn arched a brow. "Isn't that just academic detention?"
"Technically, yes," Alarie said, her mouth twitching. "But as far as punishments go, it's the perfect excuse. Late curfew, overcurious students… detention fits neatly into the record."
Xavier exhaled, a humorless sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "Guess we'll take it."
"Good," Alarie said, stepping past them toward her door. "And next time you sneak out of bounds, at least we try not to look like you just crawled out of a crypt."
Thorn almost smiled. "No promises."
The professor's door shut softly behind her, leaving them in the quiet corridor once more.
Xavier glanced at Thorn. "So… detention."
She shrugged. "Could be worse."
"Yeah," he said. "We could be as fucked as room 302."
For the first time all night, she laughed. It was low, quiet, and tired. The kind of laugh that sounded like it hurt a little.
"I think we're even more fucked."