The library after hours was a different beast. The silence wasn't quiet; it was a heavy, listening thing. The glow-strips along the floor cast long, skeletal shadows from the bookshelves. Aiden sat hunched at a terminal in a secluded carrel, the blue light of the screen the only source of warmth.
Leo's access key—a spliced-together data-chip he'd slipped to Aiden after training—felt hot in his palm. "Old maintenance logs," Leo had whispered. "System purges them every five years, but they leave fragments in the deep cache. Don't get caught."
Aiden plugged it in. The terminal screen glitched, lines of code scrolling rapidly before settling into an archaic, text-heavy interface. The school's hidden backbone. He navigated through directories named with dry codes. INF_ACD… SEC_INC…
His heart hammered against his ribs. Every noise—the distant hum of the climate system, the creak of the old building—sounded like approaching footsteps.
He found the folder: INCIDENT_LOGS/ARCHIVED.
The files were listed by date. He scrolled back, ten years, to the estimated time of the old wing fire. There. A single entry.
FILE: IR-77934
DATE: [REDACTED]
LOCATION: OLD EAST WING, ALCHEMY LAB 3
INCIDENT: STRUCTURAL FIRE / MAGICAL FEEDBACK EVENT
CASUALTY: ONE (1) STUDENT. IDENTITY: VANCE, LYRA.
STATUS: DECEASED.
OFFICIAL DETERMINATION: EQUIPMENT MALFUNCTION. UNSTABLE ALCHEMICAL CATALYST. CASE CLOSED.
NOTES: FAMILY REQUESTED EXPEDITED CLOSURE. ALL RELATED GHOST PROTOCOL REFERENCES PURGED FROM MAIN SYSTEM. SEE ORDER [VANCE-ALPHA].
The words glared from the screen.
Vance, Lyra.
The Headmaster's surname. It wasn't a coincidence. It was a bloodline.
Family requested expedited closure.
All Ghost Protocol references purged.
Order [Vance-Alpha].
A cold understanding dripped down Aiden's spine. This wasn't a covered-up accident. It was a buried one. By her own family. By the man who now ruled the school and had branded him a dangerous anomaly.
The ghost in his chest, the silent burning girl, was Headmaster Vance's dead daughter.
The ember inside him didn't flare with heat. It went cold and still, a lump of dread.
He needed to see her. Not the ghost. The girl.
He exited the terminal, pocketing the data-chip. The public archives held physical yearbooks. He found the shelf for the decade-old volumes, his fingers trailing over faux-leather spines until he found the right year.
He pulled the heavy book down and carried it to a table under a dim light-strip. The pages smelled of dust and aged paper. He flipped through, past smiling groups, sports teams, club photos. The world before the fire.
He found the "V" section for student portraits.
And there she was.
Lyra Vance.
Her photo was smaller than the others, as if added as an afterthought. She had dark hair, not fire, falling neatly to her shoulders. Her eyes were large and a little sad, looking just off-camera. She wasn't smiling like the other students. She looked pensive. Thoughtful. The caption read: Lyra Vance. Artistry Club. Quiet Soul.
Aiden stared at the picture, trying to reconcile this quiet girl with the screaming specter of living flame. This was the person. The ghost was the echo of her end.
Then he noticed it.
The corner of the page, near her photo, was discolored. Not just aged. It was charred. A small, brittle, brown-black burn mark that had eaten into the edge of the paper, warping it slightly. As if, years ago, a stray ember had landed there and been hastily smothered.
Without thinking, he reached out and touched the burned edge.
A jolt, not of electricity, but of memory-not-his-own, shot up his fingers.
A whisper, faint and fractured, coiled directly into the base of his skull. It wasn't heard with ears. It was felt in the marrow.
"…not… an accident…"
The voice was young. Female. Filled with a sorrow so deep it had turned to ash.
Aiden snatched his hand back as if scalded. The yearbook slipped, thumping closed on the table.
The whisper faded, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. The ember in his chest was a frozen stone.
He looked at his own fingertips. They were clean. But he could still feel the echo of that terrible, quiet truth.
Not an accident.
Sleep didn't come. It was ambushed.
One moment he was staring at the dark ceiling of his dorm, the yearbook photo etched behind his eyes. The next, he was elsewhere.
He was standing in a large, circular room. Stone floors, high windows dark with night. Workbenches lined the walls, cluttered with complex glassware and shimmering powders. An alchemy lab.
A younger Lyra—the girl from the photo, in a student's uniform—stood in the center of a complex runic circle etched into the floor. Her back was to him. She was concentrating, her hands moving slowly, shaping a faint silver light between them.
The door to the lab opened. A figure stood silhouetted against the brighter hallway light. Tall. Adult. Details blurred by the memory's haze.
Lyra turned, startled. "I'm almost done, I just need to—"
The figure didn't speak. It raised an arm. Something small and glassy gleamed in its hand. A vial.
It tossed the vial into the runic circle at Lyra's feet.
Not an accident.
The vial shattered on the stone. A chemical, pungent smell filled the air. The runic lines, charged with Lyra's gentle silver energy, erupted.
Not in silver. In violent, hungry green fire.
The explosion was soundless in the dream, a rapid bloom of devouring light. Lyra's silhouette was swallowed by it, her shape contorting, her hands coming up too late.
She didn't scream. She looked. At the figure in the doorway.
Then the fire turned from green to orange, to white, and her burning silhouette reached out—not in attack, but in a desperate, final question.
Why?
The vision shattered.
Aiden gasped awake, bolting upright in bed. Sweat soaked his thin shirt. The phantom smell of chemicals and smoke choked his throat.
His room was dark. The digital clock read 3:17 AM.
He was shaking. He fumbled for the light switch.
The pale glow illuminated his narrow bed.
And there, on the plain grey bedsheet, over his chest, was a perfect, blackened handprint. The fabric was burned away in the intricate lines of a palm and fingers, the edges still curling with the faintest wisp of smoke.
It was small. A girl's hand.
She had reached out from the memory. And she had left a mark.
Aiden sat in the terrible quiet, the cold ember of dread now a burning coal of certainty. Headmaster Vance's daughter was murdered. And the ghost of that murder was anchored to him.
He was no longer just a boy with a dangerous secret.
He was a boy holding a lit match over a decade-old powder keg. And the man who buried it was the one standing over him, waiting for a reason to throw him into the dark.