Chapter 2: Ashes and Warnings
Dexter hasn't slept.
His apartment wall resembles a conspiracy theorist's fever dream—photographs connected by red string, tracking movements and timelines only he understands. Clary's face appears in dozens of shots: leaving the coffee shop, walking to school, sitting in Washington Square Park sketching people who don't know they're being watched by someone who shouldn't exist.
The Institute's Gothic spires loom in telephoto close-ups. Circle members he recognizes from the show lurk in surveillance photos that should have been impossible to take. His camera has become a weapon against ignorance, documenting a hidden world that refuses to stay hidden from his lens.
When his phone buzzes with a breaking news alert—apartment fire on East 84th Street—he's already grabbing his camera and running. He knows what he'll find: ashes, confusion, and a girl whose entire reality just shattered exactly as the universe planned.
Twenty-seven minutes. That's how long it took from the news alert to reaching Clary's building. The fire department is already here, but they're fighting natural flames, not understanding the supernatural forces that started them.
The scene outside Clary's apartment building crawls with emergency responders. Fire trucks block the street, their red and white lights painting everything in urgent color. Smoke pours from upper-story windows, carrying the acrid smell of burning furniture and something else—something that makes Dexter's enhanced senses recoil.
Demon ichor. The Ravener attack was just the beginning.
He raises his camera, documenting evidence the mundane investigators will miss. Through his viewfinder, he spots them: claw marks scoring the brick beside a blown-out window, too precise to be from any earthly creature. Traces of ichor splattered across the fire escape, visible only to eyes that know what to look for. A Circle rune burned into the doorframe, still smoking with residual magic.
The Circle came for Jocelyn Fray. Took her. Left her daughter's life in ruins and called it justified. Valentine doesn't just want to kill Downworlders—he wants to break everyone who might stand against him, starting with their families.
"Sir, you can't be here."
A firefighter appears at his elbow, voice muffled by his mask. Dexter nods and moves back, but keeps shooting. Each photograph burns supernatural truth onto digital sensors, creating evidence that shouldn't exist of crimes that can't be reported.
"Dexter? What are you doing here?"
He turns to find Clary Fray standing behind him, flanked by three figures who shouldn't exist in her mundane world. Jace Wayland moves like a predator, all fluid grace and barely contained violence. Alec Lightwood's dark eyes scan for threats with military precision. Isabelle's beauty could stop traffic, but her smile carries the promise of steel.
She's already met them. The timeline's accelerating. In the show, it took longer for—
"Your mother is the best chef in the kitchen of apocalypse—she's NOT DEAD, just sleeping with the angels!"
The words explode from his throat, mangled by the curse that rewrites every attempt at helpful honesty. Clary stares at him like he's insane, grief and fury warring in her green eyes. The taste of copper fills his mouth as the system extracts its price for attempted prophecy.
Jace's hand moves to his weapon. "Who is this guy?"
"I don't know," Clary says, voice tight with emotion. "He was at Pandemonium last night, talking crazy then too."
She's in shock. Processing trauma. Seeing her home burn, her mother gone, everything she thought she knew revealed as lies. I need to help her, but how do you comfort someone when you can only speak in riddles?
Alec steps forward, every line of his body radiating suspicion. "You seem to turn up at a lot of supernatural crime scenes, mundane."
"I'm a photographer," Dexter manages, words blessedly clear when he states simple truth. "I document what others miss."
"Like what, exactly?" Isabelle asks, whip coiled at her hip like a sleeping serpent.
Dexter shows them his camera display. The photos cycle through impossible images: the Ravener's death captured in perfect detail, demon ichor splattered across club walls, supernatural evidence that shouldn't exist on mundane technology.
The three Shadowhunters exchange glances loaded with meaning. Alec's hand moves to his bow. Jace's fingers brush his blade. Even Isabelle's flirtatious smile turns predatory.
"Institute," Alec says quietly. "Now."
POV: Alec Lightwood
The Institute's interrogation room smells of stone and old incense, designed to intimidate through sheer weight of history. Alec Lightwood sits across from the mundane photographer, studying him with a soldier's trained eye for deception.
Something's wrong with this guy. He shows up at Pandemonium during a demon attack. He's here photographing evidence before we arrive. His camera captures things it shouldn't be able to see. Either he's Circle, or he's something else entirely.
The mundane—Dexter Hale, according to his driver's license—sits calmly despite being surrounded by warriors who could kill him without effort. His heterochromatic eyes move constantly, cataloging details, calculating exits. Not the behavior of an innocent bystander.
"Start from the beginning," Alec says, voice carrying the authority of someone raised to command. "What were you doing at Pandemonium?"
"Taking pictures," Dexter replies. "Night photography. Urban exploration. Documenting subcultures."
"Subcultures that include demons?"
"I didn't know what it was until I developed the film."
Liar. Alec can hear it in the slight hesitation, see it in the way Dexter's fingers drum against his thigh. But the photos don't lie—hundreds of them, spanning weeks, documenting supernatural activity across New York with impossible precision.
Isabelle enters carrying Dexter's confiscated camera equipment. "You need to see this," she says, voice tight with concern.
The photos spread across the table tell a story that makes Alec's blood run cold. Demon attacks in Central Park, captured with telephoto lenses from impossible distances. Circle members meeting in abandoned warehouses, their faces clearly visible despite security that should have prevented surveillance. And most disturbing of all: photographs of Clary Fray taken days before she ever saw her first demon.
"How?" Alec demands, jabbing a finger at the images. "How did you know to watch her?"
Dexter opens his mouth, and what emerges sounds like madness: "The holy grail is in a pack of cards painted by rats—CHECK THE DECK!"
The Mortal Cup. He's talking about the Mortal Cup, hidden in Dorothea's tarot cards. But that's impossible—nobody outside the Circle knows that location. Unless...
"How do you know about the Cup?" Alec's voice drops to a whisper.
"I read a lot of books about fictional monsters that are surprisingly accurate—TRUST ME, I'M A PHOTOGRAPHER!"
The words come out distorted, but there's truth beneath the nonsense. Alec has spent enough time around lies to recognize honesty when he hears it, even when it makes no sense.
POV: Dexter Hale
Isabelle Lightwood is terrifying in person. On screen, she was fierce but fundamentally heroic. Here, studying me like I'm a specimen, she's a predator barely contained in human form. Her beauty is weapon-sharp, designed to distract enemies before her whip opens their throats.
"You have the Sight," Isabelle observes, leading him through Institute corridors that seem to stretch forever. "It's rare among mundanes, but not impossible."
The greenhouse waits at the corridor's end, filled with plants that shouldn't exist and creatures that definitely shouldn't. Roses with thorns like razors grow beside demon-trap flytraps. A Shax demon writhes in a reinforced cage, its multiple eyes tracking their movement with predatory intelligence.
"Take a picture," Isabelle commands.
Dexter raises his backup camera—they'd confiscated his main equipment but missed the compact digital hidden in his jacket. Through the viewfinder, the demon writhes in perfect clarity, every detail of its chitinous hide visible despite the supernatural glamour that should hide it from mortal eyes.
He lowers the camera and speaks without thinking: "Shax vulnerabilities include salt, cold iron, and direct sunlight. They hunt in packs of three to five, targeting children and the elderly. Their paralytic venom wears off in six hours, but leaves victims susceptible to possession by lesser demons."
Silence stretches between them, broken only by the demon's frustrated chittering.
I know too much. Way too much for a random mundane with the Sight. They're going to figure out something's wrong with me, and then what? Do I tell them I'm from another world where their lives are entertainment? That I watched their stories on a TV show and somehow ended up here when I died?
[SYSTEM ALERT: SHADOWHUNTER FACTION STATUS UPDATE]
[CURRENT STANDING: SUSPICIOUS BUT NOT HOSTILE]
[QUEST PROGRESS: "PREVENT THE PREDICTABLE" - 25% COMPLETE]
The interface pulses softly in his peripheral vision, invisible to everyone else. The system tracks his progress like a game, measuring success through arbitrary metrics that reduce lives to statistics.
Jace appears in the greenhouse doorway, golden hair catching the morning light that streams through crystal windows. "Hodge wants to see him."
Hodge Starkweather. Circle member turned Institute tutor, bound by curse and regret. In the show, he was sympathetic—a good man who made one terrible choice and spent decades paying for it. But here, studying me with those knowing eyes, he's dangerous in ways the show never captured.
"You photograph things that shouldn't exist," Hodge observes, voice carrying the weight of centuries of accumulated knowledge. "You know details about demons that aren't found in any mundane bestiary. And you speak in riddles that almost make sense, like prophecy filtered through madness."
He's Circle. Was Circle. He knows more than he's saying, recognizes patterns the others miss. If anyone's going to figure out my secret, it'll be him.
"I read a lot of books about fictional monsters that are surprisingly accurate," Dexter repeats, the curse allowing him to state literal truth. "TRUST ME, I'M A PHOTOGRAPHER!"
Hodge's eyes narrow. "Indeed. And what do your photographs tell you about what's coming?"
The question hangs in the air like a challenge. Dexter feels the curse coiling in his throat, ready to strangle any attempt at prophecy. But maybe, just maybe, he can hint around the edges.
"The kitchen of apocalypse needs better seasoning," he says carefully. "And someone should really check on the sleeping angels before they wake up angry."
It's nonsense to everyone else. But Hodge's expression shifts, just slightly, and Dexter knows the message was received. Danger coming. People sleeping who should wake up. Angels—Shadowhunters—who will face more than they expect.
He understands. Not completely, not clearly, but enough to know I'm not just some mundane with the Sight. I'm something else. Something dangerous and potentially useful.
They release him with warnings to stay available and threats of what happens to civilians who interfere with Shadowhunter business. Dexter walks New York streets at dawn, photographing shadows that dance with secrets only he can see.
His backup photos tell the story hidden beneath the morning's chaos. In one frame, barely visible in the background, a figure watches from across the street during the fire. A man in a long coat with distinctive scarring, his face partially obscured but unmistakable to someone who knows what to look for.
Valentine Morgenstern. The monster himself, already closer than the timeline suggests. Already hunting.
I need allies. Real ones. The Shadowhunters suspect me, but they don't trust me. Can't, really, when I can't explain how I know what I know. But there are others. Downworlders who might be willing to make deals with someone who can document truths they need proven.
The system interface pulses, displaying nearby Downworlder locations like glowing beacons on a map only he can see. Hotels that house vampires. Bars where werewolves gather. Shops where warlocks sell more than coffee and conversation.
One name glows brighter than the rest: Hotel DuMort.
Time to introduce myself to the vampire community. Time to find out if a mundane with impossible knowledge and a camera that sees too much can earn himself some supernatural allies.
Time to start forming contracts.
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