Mira didn't want to go back to Ravenshade High.
She tried everything to avoid it, detouring on walks, "forgetting" her homework, pretending to be sick, but the spiral burned beneath her skin like a brand, tugging her thoughts back to Room 2B.
And then, one morning, her phone buzzed with a single message:
"The door won't stay closed. You have to go back. – Z."
She stared at it for a long time.
He knew.
The school grounds were deserted.
Classes were still technically suspended, gas leak "repairs" and "structural inspection delays "but the real reason hummed behind every locked door. The kind of silence you could choke on.
Mira jumped the fence.
The windows were dark. The flag didn't move. Not even the pigeons were around.
She stepped into the main hall and the air shifted stale and too still. Like the building had been holding its breath.
Her fingers itched.
2B was at the end of the eastern corridor. The doors to every classroom along the way were shut tight.
Except for one.
The music room.
The door was cracked open just enough to tempt.
Mira felt it, the tug. That same invisible thread pulling her off course.
She paused.
Then pushed the door open.
Inside, the grand piano stood untouched, and the sheet music on the stand was blank.
But the room wasn't empty.
A figure stood near the back, tall, broad-shouldered, facing away.
Mr. Aldren.
Her favorite teacher.
"Mr. Aldren?" she called.
He didn't move.
She took a step closer. "It's me. Mira. Are you okay?"
Still nothing.
Her stomach knotted. Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
She took one more step, and he twitched.
Not a normal flinch. A spasm. Like his body wasn't fully his.
"Mira." His voice was hoarse. Strained. "You shouldn't be here."
"I had to come. Something's—"
"Wrong," he finished. "Yes."
He turned slowly.
His eyes were glassy, unfocused.
And his hands
They flickered.
Like static. Like smoke trying to take form.
Mira backed up. "What's happening to you?"
He blinked hard, his body jerking again, as if something inside was trying to escape. "You don't have time to understand. Just run. Now."
But she couldn't move.
Because behind him, the mirror in the music room's corner, always used for choreography began to warp.
The reflection bent.
It showed the room, but not as it was.
There were eyes in the reflection. And teeth.
Mr. Aldren groaned, clutching his head. "They're using me. I can't hold it back."
And then
The mirror shattered.
Not into glass.
Into light.
And through it stepped something that was almost him. Same shape. Same suit. But hollow, pale, and wrong. Like a photocopy of his soul that had been burned at the edges.
Mira screamed.
The creature lunged.
But Mr. Aldren moved.
He collided with the thing, his duplicate, forcing it back through the broken mirror-light. For a moment, they flickered locked together in a storm of crackling energy.
"GO!" he roared.
Mira bolted.
She didn't stop running until she reached Room 2B.
The door opened before she could touch it.
Inside, the room was dark, but it wasn't abandoned.
Zeke stood in the center, holding a flashlight and something Mira didn't expect:
A book.
Old. Thick. Bound in what looked like cracked leather.
"It's called the Rift Codex," he said. "I found it in the archives."
"Of course you did," Mira panted, slamming the door behind her.
He frowned. "What happened?"
"Your favorite teacher tried to eat me. That's what happened."
"Wait—Mr. Aldren?"
"He's possessed. Or doubled. Or ripped or something. I don't even know."
Zeke looked pale. "It's spreading."
"What is?"
He opened the book and turned it toward her.
A familiar spiral was printed on the page. Below it, a single line of text:
"The Rift manifests first in mirrors and minds."
Mira swallowed. "So he's… infected?"
"I don't think that was him anymore," Zeke said quietly. "I think the Rift made a copy. And it's learning."
Mira dropped into a desk chair, head spinning. "How long have you known?"
Zeke hesitated. "Since last year."
Mira's eyes snapped to his.
"You what?"
He didn't answer immediately.
And that silence, just two seconds too long, told her everything.
"You've seen this before," she whispered.
"I thought it was over," he said. "I thought… last time, we closed it."
"Last time?"
His voice cracked. "It took someone."
The room pulsed, like the walls had flinched at the memory.
"Who?" she asked.
But Zeke shook his head.
Not yet.
---
They stayed in the classroom until the sun began to set. The air grew colder. The chalkboard flickered once, just once, with that strange symbol before returning to normal.
Mira traced the cover of the Codex.
The leather felt warm.
"I think it's calling to me," she said softly.
"It should," Zeke replied. "It's yours now."
"How do you know?"
"Because it rejected me."
He lifted his hand, and Mira saw the black scar running down his palm. As if the book had bitten him.
She didn't know what to say.
So she opened it.
And the pages turned on their own.
Right to a new chapter.
One with her name at the top.
MIRA DEVEREUX
Bearer of Threadlight
Awakened: Unstable
Her breath caught.
The page glowed faintly.
And the next line pulsed as if being written in real time:
"The Rift
remembers its own."