*CHAPTER 3*

The tower didn’t have doors.

That was the first thing Kaze noticed when they stood in front of it at midnight.

Stone.

Dark.

A bell hanging in the open at the top like a wound.

No way in.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Ren muttered. “Why make it easy.”

The nine of them stood in a half circle on the grass.

No one had slept.

No one had said they would try.

They just all showed up.

Mizuki was holding a paper lantern that wasn’t lit.

Yui had a stack of folded cranes in her arms.

The twins were holding hands.

Sora, the girl with scarred knuckles, had her fists clenched.

The glasses boy kept pushing his glasses up even though they weren’t falling.

The boy who fainted was still pale, but he was standing.

Kaze looked up.

The bell was still.

It didn’t look big from down here.

It looked inevitable.

“We need to get in,” Kaze said.

“There is no in,” Ren said.

“There has to be.”

Yui stepped forward.

She held out one crane.

It twitched in her hand.

Then it lifted.

On its own.

And flew up.

Straight at the stone.

It hit the wall and flattened.

And stayed there.

A faint line appeared around it.

Like a doorframe drawn in dust.

“The bell remembers sound,” Yui whispered. “And paper remembers doors.”

Mizuki lit the lantern.

The light was soft.

It made the line in the stone glow.

Ren pressed his hand to it.

Cold.

He pushed.

The stone moved.

Not much.

But enough.

A crack.

Then another.

Then the wall slid inward, an inch.

Enough for air to come out.

Old air.

The smell of rust and something sweet underneath.

“Okay,” Ren said. “Now we have a door.”

They went in one at a time.

Inside was a spiral staircase.

No rail.

Just stone steps going up into dark.

The air was colder here.

And quieter.

Like sound didn’t want to live in this place.

Kaze went first.

His chest was tight.

Not from _Echo Sight_.

From waiting for it.

Step after step.

No one talked.

The only sound was breathing and the soft shuffle of feet.

Halfway up, the lantern flickered.

Mizuki stopped.

“Did you feel that?”

“What?”

“The air moved.”

It hadn’t.

But Kaze’s chest did.

Cold.

_Echo Sight._

Nine seconds.

Stairwell.

Above them.

A shadow.

Not on the stairs.

In the wall.

Reaching out.

“Above!” Kaze said.

They didn’t run.

There was nowhere to run.

The wall rippled.

A hand came out.

Then an arm.

Then a head with no face.

It dropped onto the stairs above them and started coming down.

Ren threw a knife.

It passed through.

The thing didn’t stop.

Mizuki’s hands lit up.

The light hit the shadow and it hissed.

But it kept coming.

Yui threw a crane.

It burst into light midair.

The shadow recoiled.

Kaze grabbed Mizuki’s arm and pulled her back a step.

Then another.

“Down,” he said. “We go down.”

They retreated.

Fast.

Back to the door.

The shadow didn’t follow.

It stopped at the halfway point and sank back into the wall.

Outside again, everyone was breathing hard.

“That’s not going to work,” Ren said.

“No,” Kaze agreed. “Not like that.”

Yui was looking at the wall.

At the faint doorframe.

“The bell remembers sound,” she said again. “So we give it something else to remember.”

She took all the cranes from her arms and set them on the ground in a circle.

Then she sat in the middle.

Closed her eyes.

And started to hum.

It wasn’t a song.

It was a sound.

Low.

Steady.

Like a bell that hadn’t rung yet.

The cranes lifted.

One by one.

And flew at the wall.

They didn’t hit it.

They sank into it.

And the wall lit up.

Veins of light spreading out from where each crane had gone in.

The door opened.

All the way this time.

Yui opened her eyes.

She looked tired.

“Now,” she said.

They went in again.

This time the stairs were lit.

Not by the lantern.

By the light in the walls.

From the cranes.

They climbed faster.

No shadows.

No sound.

Just the stairs and the light.

At the top was a room.

Circular.

Stone.

And in the center, hanging from nothing, was the bell.

It was bigger up close.

Dark metal.

Cracked down one side.

And it was humming.

Not ringing.

Humming.

Like it was waiting.

Under it, on the floor, was a circle carved into the stone.

Nine segments.

Four of them glowed faint gold.

Five were dark.

Kaze’s chest hurt.

“The mark,” Mizuki whispered.

“Yeah,” Kaze said.

Ren walked around the circle.

“There’s nothing here to break it with.”

“There doesn’t have to be,” Mizuki said. “We just have to stop it from ringing.”

“How?”

No one answered.

The bell hummed louder.

Kaze stepped into the circle.

The moment his foot crossed the line, the cold hit him.

_Echo Sight._

Nine seconds.

This room.

The bell.

It rang.

Once.

And the floor under them cracked.

And the light went out.

He jerked back out of the circle.

Gasping.

“What did you see?”

“It rings,” Kaze said. “If we stay, it rings. And something happens.”

“So we leave,” Ren said.

“We can’t,” Mizuki said. “The seventh toll is coming. If we’re not here, it will find us somewhere else.”

The bell hummed.

Louder.

Yui stood.

She walked to the edge of the circle and held out her hand.

The air above her palm shimmered.

A small bell appeared.

Bone white.

Cracked.

The one from the Headmaster’s office.

“I took it,” Yui said. “From her desk.”

She placed it in the center of the circle.

On the stone.

The big bell’s humming stopped.

For a second, everything was quiet.

Then the small bell cracked further.

A line running down its side.

And the big bell rang.

Not loud.

Soft.

_DONG._

The sixth toll.

Kaze felt it.

Nine seconds.

The room.

All of them.

The shadow came from the walls this time.

Not one.

Nine of them.

One for each of them.

“Scatter!” Kaze yelled.

They did.

The shadows moved fast.

Kaze grabbed the glasses boy and pulled him behind a pillar.

A shadow passed over where he’d been standing.

Ren was fighting two at once with knives that did nothing.

Mizuki’s light was keeping three back.

The twins were back to back, pushing with whatever that power was.

Sora was punching one in the face.

It didn’t help, but she was doing it.

Yui was standing in the center, by the small bell, and the shadows weren’t touching her.

The bell rang again.

_DONG._

Not the seventh.

An echo.

The shadows paused.

Then they all turned and went for Yui.

“No!” Kaze ran.

He got there in six seconds.

He put himself between Yui and the shadows.

They hit him.

Not with hands.

With cold.

With weight.

With the feeling of falling.

He hit the floor.

Couldn’t breathe.

Hands on him.

Mizuki.

Ren.

Pulling him up.

The shadows were gone.

The bell was silent.

Yui was on her knees, holding the small bell.

It was in two pieces now.

“It took it,” Yui whispered. “The echo. Instead of us.”

Kaze coughed.

His chest hurt.

But he was breathing.

Footsteps.

Hoshizaki.

She stood in the doorway.

Looking at the broken bell in Yui’s hands.

At the big bell above.

At Kaze on the floor.

“You broke it,” she said.

“We didn’t,” Kaze said.

“You did. You gave it something else to take.”

She walked in.

Picked up the two pieces of the small bell.

“I’ve been doing this for two hundred years,” she said. “No one has ever done that before.”

She looked at Kaze.

“You’re making this interesting.”

She turned and left.

The door closed behind her.

On its own.

No one moved for a long time.

Then Ren swore.

“Did we just win?”

“No,” Mizuki said. “We just bought time.”

Kaze sat up.

His chest still hurt.

But the cold was gone.

“How many left?”

“Three,” Mizuki said.

“Three tolls.”

They went down the stairs.

The door closed behind them.

And the wall sealed again.

Like it had never opened.

Back in Room 32, no one slept.

They sat in a circle.

Kaze was in the middle.

Because his chest still hurt and no one said it but everyone knew.

“The bell remembers sound,” Yui said. “We gave it a different sound.

But it will learn.”

“How long do we have?”

“Not long,” Yui said.

Kaze looked at his hands.

They were steady.

For now.

He thought about his sister.

About nine seconds.

About being too late.

He wasn’t going to be late again.

“Okay,” he said. “Then we plan for the next one.

And the one after that.

And the one after that.”

Ren nodded.

Mizuki took his hand.

Yui started folding again.

Outside, the tower was silent.

For now.

Three tolls left.

And somewhere in the school, the Headmaster was smiling.

Kaze closed his eyes.

He could feel it.

The next cold coming.

He opened them.

“I’m ready,” he said.

No one answered.

They didn’t need to.

They were all ready.

The bell would ring again.

But this time, they would be waiting.

*END CHAPTER 3*

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