Rain again.


Maren watched it smear the windows of her classroom, the same gray sky stretched like static across the horizon. The hum of the fluorescent lights overhead merged with the soft tapping of raindrops, turning everything into white noise. Her red notebook sat on her desk, untouched, but not asleep. She could feel it pulsing faintly in her bag like a second heartbeat. No words appeared today. That was almost worse.


It was waiting.


She tried to focus on the teacher’s voice, on the faint scratch of pencils around her, but her gaze kept drifting. Something about the rain made the world feel less stable, like she was looking at it through a warped lens.


"Maren?" the teacher’s voice cut through the haze. "The next line, please."


She blinked down at the open textbook. Macbeth. I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent... Her lips moved, but no sound came.


Because the words were wrong.


In the margin of the page, in ink too dark to be printed, someone had written:


"She dreams in iambic lies."


A chill slid down her spine. That wasn’t there before. Her fingers tingled. The ink looked fresh, almost wet. It curled at the edges like it had been written by something that didn’t quite understand how to mimic a human hand.


She slammed the book shut.


Later, in the hallway, she moved in a daze. The world felt paused, like a film reel had skipped. She didn’t realize Lila was there until a warm coffee cup was pressed into her hand.


"It’s starting again, isn’t it?" Lila asked.


Maren nodded. Her voice was too brittle to use. "It never stopped. It just... paused."


Lila’s eyes flicked to Maren’s backpack. "Mine wrote something last night."


"What?"


"Your name. But not just yours. Ava. Callie. And one more I didn’t recognize. A fifth. Just a blank line, then a mark like a blot."


Maren swallowed. She thought of the inkstain that had appeared on her pillow that morning—shaped like an open eye.


"The Book is gathering them," she whispered.


Lila nodded grimly. "Or ending them."