Rael kept names in secret.

Not just of the children who vanished—but the times. The patterns. Always at night. Always preceded by a strange, soft bell sound no one else noticed. Akari did. And sometimes he’d stay awake beside her, counting how long the sound lasted, memorizing the footsteps that followed.

Something wasn’t right.

Even the walls seemed to hum sometimes.

And when Caeli woke screaming one night—saying she saw someone watching through the cracks in the floorboards—Akari didn’t tell her it was just a dream.

Because he’d seen them too.