It was Mara's idea.
Not Talwyn's.
Not Julian's.
Hers.
They gathered again in the abandoned maintenance room—Greystone House's unofficial graveyard of broken furniture and forgotten years. Tonight, it felt colder. The dust hung heavier. Even the shadows seemed to listen.
In the center of the room lay a single burnt-edged note, retrieved from the Archives earlier that afternoon. The staff had tried to destroy it—half of the parchment was charred—but the name was still faintly visible.
Lina.
Mara stood over it, hands tucked into the sleeves of her threadbare sweater, eyes hollow but steady.
"She left something behind," she murmured.
Julian scoffed under his breath. "She's gone, Mara."
"No," Mara whispered. "Not completely."
Talwyn looked at her, jaw tight. "You think you can track her through… what she felt?"
Mara didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Mara and Lina, born as natural Legilimens, carried abilities cut from the same spectrum—though neither in a way the world considered safe. No one reached Greystone House without something having gone terribly wrong. For most Legilimens, their gift bloomed quietly; for these two, the manifestation had been violent, uncontrolled, usually beginning with an accident that left others shaken or hurt.
But Mara… Mara was different.
Her talent was so severe that it blurred the line between emotion and place. She didn't just read people—she could read rooms, objects, anything that had been soaked long enough or strong enough in someone's fear or longing or grief.
Caelum stepped forward. He said nothing, but the air around him shifted—quiet, heavy, expectant.
If Mara said Lina had left something behind, then she had.
And he would help her find it.
…
Later That Night
Room 17-B was empty.
Officially, it was "unassigned."
In reality, it had been scrubbed clean—too clean.
The bed was made with military precision. The walls polished, the ward-lines freshly reset.
Julian muttered, "There was not a single trace that it had ever been her room."
Caelum stood by the door, cloaked in the dim shimmer of his Disillusionment Charm. He scanned the corners, the floor, the seams of the walls. Nothing obvious. Nothing physical.
Greystone was good at hiding wrongs.
But tonight, they weren't looking for logs or paper trails.
They were looking for echoes.
Mara stepped into the center of the room, closing her eyes.
Her fingers twitched the way they always did when her gift stirred—like antennae searching for a signal.
Talwyn touched her shoulder briefly. "Are you sure you're up for this?"
"I'm not going deep," she whispered. "Just enough to know… what she felt."
She knelt beside the bed, placed her palm on the thin mattress—
Mara's breath hitched.
"Fear," she whispered. "She was afraid. Very afraid."
Julian's voice wavered. "When they took her?"
Mara nodded faintly. "She was awake. They didn't stun her. They used… something else. Something that smothered her magic and her voice. She couldn't scream."
Talwyn's fists clenched. "Silencing spells on a minor? That's illegal."
Mara's hand trembled as she slid it across the mattress, toward the far wall.
"She pushed back," Mara murmured. "She tried to resist. And in that moment… she left something. In the walls."
She stood abruptly and crossed the room, placing her palm flat against the eastern wall.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then Mara gasped—
—her body jerking like she'd been struck by lightning.
Her voice came out raw, strangled, layered with another girl's terror:
"Help—don't let them take me—don't let them hide me—
Something's wrong—don't believe the healers—"
Mara ripped her hand back, stumbling. Talwyn caught her before she hit the floor.
Silence slammed into the room.
Caelum stepped forward slowly.
"She left an empathic imprint."
Mara nodded shakily. "Not just a trace. A deliberate echo. She forced her emotions into the walls when they grabbed her—using whatever residual magic she had left before it was sealed."
Julian stared. "That shouldn't be possible."
Talwyn swallowed. "Not unless she knew she wouldn't have a chance to come back."
Caelum looked between them, his voice level but soft. "She knew."
He turned to Mara.
"Is she alive?"
Mara bit her lip. Her eyes glistened.
"I don't know. The echo cuts off too sharply."
Julian's voice cracked. "They didn't transfer her. They took her somewhere else."
Caelum nodded slowly. "There's a chamber below the medical wing. Storage. Off-registry. Staff go there late at night with keys that don't belong to any department."
Talwyn's eyes narrowed. "You think Lina is down there?"
"I think," Caelum said carefully, "if she's still inside Greystone, that's the only place they'd hide her. Every other wing is either too run-down to hold someone unnoticed… or too exposed."
…
Hours Later
Back in his room, Caelum sat at the edge of his narrow bed, staring at the faint glow of the rune-lamp above him. The walls hummed softly with containment wards—Greystone's lullaby.
Magic remembers, Mara had said.
And she was right.
Greystone had kept secrets long before he arrived. He had known that. He had accepted it. He had even thought he could survive it—learn quietly, stay quiet, gather what he needed until he could prove himself harmless and leave.
But tonight shattered that illusion.
He wasn't the only secret this place intended to bury.
Tomorrow, Greystone House would give up one of its ghosts.