The dormitory was heavy with sleep. Beds sagged, blankets rose and fell, the small chorus of breathing made the long hall sound like it belonged to something alive. Rain had softened into mist, tapping gently at the windows, each drop too polite to break glass.
Megan lay flat on her back, arm across her eyes, sleeve pulled low over the hand that refused to cool. She counted backward from a hundred. She rehearsed excuses for homework she hadn't done. None of it masked the rhythm pressing at her ribs.
Not sound, but pressure. A cold, deliberate pulse in the air. Like someone invisible was taking roll call in the dark, one space at a time.
She pulled the blanket tighter, but the rhythm followed her inward. Her thoughts slipped, the edges of the room dissolved, and the dream arrived like a floor tilting.
She stood in the east corridor.
Lamps burned thin, their flames stretched as if someone were tugging them. The floor showed three clean salt lines, converging on a grate in the center. The grate breathed. Not air, not steam, but something slower and heavier, like a hunger that didn't need to hurry.
Her hand rose of its own accord. The mark beneath her skin flared. The grate shivered, aware.
"What is this?" she whispered.
I am the Witness.
Mist gathered into a presence with no face, no edge, only weight. Cards scattered across the floor, each stamped with the eye burned into her palm.
"You again," Megan said. "You need better hobbies."
You knocked, the Witness said. The book answered.
"I didn't knock."
You were heard.
The first card flipped. A boy's face—smiling faintly, the one from the newest missing poster. His mouth opened to form a word that never reached sound.
The second turned. Shadowed hands lifted fingers one by one, not counting money but counting names. Each pause a weight. Each name removed from some hidden list.
The third revealed a procession of cloaked students moving in silence, heads bowed, stepping carefully between salt lines. Their shadows leaned forward as though pulled.
Megan tried for humor, but her mouth was dry. "What is this supposed to be?"
Tithe Night.
Her chest cinched tight. "What's the price?"
A name. Crossed out, the Witness said. A debt for a debt. A life for a life. Balance written in silence.
"That's not balance," she said. "That's theft dressed in robes."
When no one questions the scale, theft becomes balance.
The grate exhaled again, and the breath brushed her ears like a word that almost was her name, wrong at the corners, trying to learn her.
"Not mine," she whispered.
Then choose another.
The cards ignited into ash. The corridor dissolved.
Megan woke with the dorm ceiling too close, sweat cooling on her neck. The rhythm didn't stop to let her catch up. It pressed again, patient, deliberate, like a finger testing glass.
Every bed seemed full of sleep. Lena breathed steady above her, the kind of rhythm that should have been comforting.
A floorboard creaked.
Across the dorm, a boy in a gray robe slid from his bed. He moved carefully, shoes dangling from one hand, eyes avoiding the Prefects' patrol bell by the door. He slipped through the exit without stirring anyone else.
Megan sat up. Her palm pulsed hot. The mark wanted east wing, now.
She swung her legs over the side.
"Meg?" Lena's voice was low but sharp, tugged awake. She leaned over the bunk, hair shadowing her face. "Where are you going?"
"Bathroom," Megan whispered.
"Your sleeve's glowing."
Megan yanked it lower. "Reflection. From the moon. Very avant-garde."
"It's raining. There is no moon."
"Then my aura." She grinned, too sharp. "Don't tell anyone. They'll start charging me rent."
Lena frowned. "Don't wander. Promise."
"I'll be right back."
Before Lena could press further, Megan slipped through the door. It closed behind her with the sound of a breath.
The corridor wore too much dark. Lamps flickered, stubborn against the air. The stone seemed to listen.
The rhythm returned, no longer distant. It marched just ahead of her, steps she almost matched. She hugged her arms across her chest, breath showing white though the night wasn't cold enough for frost.
On the stairwell landing she froze. Below, Prefects passed, boots crisp, keys clinking faintly. Their silence was the kind that assumed guilt. She pressed back into an alcove until they moved on, then continued down, quieter than she knew how to be.
A spill of salt caught her eye—dust smeared across the floor, as if someone had tried to sweep it away. A faint line still held against the stone.
Her mouth filled with iron.
At the corridor's turn, the gray-robed boy appeared again. He wasn't alone now. Two more waited by a rope barrier, hoods low, lantern shaded to hide its glow. The light pooled only at their feet.
Megan flattened into the wall, sleeve against her mouth.
"Late," said a voice.
"Patrol," the boy whispered. "Is it tonight?"
"The moon is hidden," said the lantern-holder. "That's when balance can be written clean."
"Balance," the boy repeated, but the word shook.
"Do you have the name?" asked the third.
A pause. "Yes."
Megan's mark burned. The rhythm slid into the space between them, brushing her skin like cold breath. Not numbers. Not words. A silent roll call waiting for an answer.
The rope lifted. They ducked beneath and walked deeper.
Megan counted to three and followed. Not following meant imagining a new poster on the board by morning.
The east wing loomed colder. A crooked sign leaned against a column: MAINTENANCE — DO NOT ENTER. The paint bled, and in the corner someone had scratched a small eye, then scraped it out. The walls hummed with stubborn lamp light. Salt lines reappeared, neat triangles pointing toward the same center.
They stopped before the grate. The lantern dimmed further, light crouched to the stones.
"Speak it," the third said.
The boy whispered. Megan didn't hear the word, but felt it. A shape placed on a scale. The grate exhaled as if tasting it. The rhythm brushed the word, memorizing its edges.
The lantern-holder drew salt in a triangle around the grate, leaving a narrow gap. An opening.
Megan ducked into a shallow alcove. Her sleeve scraped stone, a sound too loud in the hush.
The lantern jerked. "Who's there?"
Her chest locked. She didn't breathe. Her hand burned like fire.
"Nothing," the third said after a pause. "The building settles. Old stones."
The boy looked back nervously. The mark in her palm pulsed. The rhythm pressed against her heartbeat until the two moved in sync.
The third nodded toward the gap. "Once more. Speak, then step forward. A name for a name. Debt for debt. Balance."
The boy trembled. "It's just a story," he whispered. "We do it, then it's done."
"Everything is a story," the third said, "until it isn't."
The grate's breath curled her hair. The rhythm pressed harder, steady, merciless.
"No," Megan whispered before she knew she'd said it.
The figures turned. The lantern light spilled over her. Her sleeve glowed faintly with the mark beneath. The boy's eyes widened. The other two drew in sharp breaths.
"Who are you?" the third demanded.
"Remedial sarcasm," Megan said, her voice shaking. "F-tier."
"Go back to bed," said the lantern-holder. "This isn't yours."
"Perfect," she said. "Then you won't mind if I stand here not doing it."
The boy looked between the salt gap and her hand. The grate breathed again, tasting names.
"Move," the third said.
"Make me," Megan snapped, hating the tremor.
The lantern-holder raised a palm. Salt glimmered in his skin. The triangle blinked with brief light.
Megan yanked back her sleeve. The mark flared, lashes burning like black fire.
All three stared.
"What did you touch?" the lantern-holder whispered.
"Bad literature," Megan said. "Fantastic typography."
The boy breathed, "Witness." Not to her, but to the grate.
Her pulse locked to the rhythm. For one terrifying second, her heartbeat and the invisible roll call were the same beat.
Far down the hall, keys jingled, boots struck stone. Patrol. Closer.
Megan lifted her chin. "Here's balance. You walk away, and I don't start yelling about ritual salt."
The lantern-holder hesitated. The third didn't.
"Name," he ordered the boy. "Say it."
The boy's mouth opened.
Megan stepped across the salt line. Cold rushed her legs. The grate inhaled. Her hand seared. She planted herself in the gap, between the boy and the dark. Her voice rang louder than she felt brave enough for.
"Not tonight."
The corridor answered: the jingle of Prefect keys, and the grind of something below the grate shifting awake.
The lantern flared. Salt hissed. The rhythm faltered, then resumed, as steady and merciless as ever.