I opened my eyes inside a lonely castle with its doors and windows thrown wide open, as if it had been waiting for me. A full moon hung low in the sky, pale and trembling, slowly darkening as if it were blushing with blood.
Cold wind rushed through the halls, whispering through torn curtains and rattling forgotten glass. Somewhere beyond the stone walls, wolves howled — long, aching cries that sounded less like warnings and more like laments.
He stood at the far end of the hall, half hidden between moonlight and shadow. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. His skin held a faint silver glow, like moonlight resting on water, and his eyes — deep, luminous blue — locked onto mine with an intensity that made my heart forget how to beat. When he walked toward me, the world seemed to move with him, as if the castle itself bent to his presence.
He stopped only inches away from me. He smelled of flowers after rain and something darker beneath, like ancient woods and secrets buried too deep to name. I should have been afraid, but instead I felt drawn. He lifted his hand and hesitated just before touching my cheek, as if asking permission from something unseen.
The moon flickered. Its light dimmed, the wind turned cold, and my body stiffened as if an invisible thread had been tied around my soul. I caught sight of my reflection in a shattered mirror beside me and gasped. My eyes had turned crimson. A delicate crown rested on my head, its surface stained like rusted roses. My lips were too red, my dress shimmered with shadows instead of fabric, and I no longer recognized myself — and yet I felt strangely complete.
He smiled at me then, not cruelly, not kindly, but reverently, as if I were something sacred and forbidden all at once.
"You were always meant to wake."
His voice was velvet and ruin. The castle seemed to breathe around us. The wolves fell silent. I wanted to ask who he was and what I had become, but my voice had vanished. He leaned closer, resting his forehead gently against mine, his presence impossibly warm in the cold of that endless night.
"I will find you."
The words settled into me like a promise or a curse. Then everything shattered, darkness folded in on itself, and red light flooded my vision.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
My alarm tore me out of sleep, and I jolted upright in bed, gasping, my heart racing as if I had been running through nightmares instead of dreaming them. My room was quiet and ordinary, morning light spilling through the curtains. I was home, alive, human. My hands trembled as I ran them over my face, my arms, my chest — solid, warm, untouched. It had been a dream.
Just a dream.
But the echo of his voice still lingered in my ears.
"I will find you."
I sat there longer than I should have, staring at nothing, letting my breathing slow. Dreams were supposed to be harmless, just the mind processing old thoughts, fears, stories, movies, and songs. Residual noise. That's what I told myself.
It didn't work.
I swung my legs off the bed and stood in front of the mirror. My reflection stared back at me, pale from poor sleep, eyes shadowed with something that hadn't been there before. For a moment — just a moment — I thought my pupils looked darker than usual. I blinked. I exhaled slowly and got dressed.
Today was my first day at the new job. My fresh start. The farthest place I could find from everything I had burned behind me.
Two years ago, I had been someone else. Angrier. Sharper. Obsessed.
My grandfather had ruined my family quietly, meticulously, the way powerful people always do — through signatures instead of knives, through money instead of blood. My two uncles and my aunt had helped him. I had gathered proof for years, digging through accounts, messages, shell companies, contracts, bribes. I had built a case strong enough to collapse empires.
And then he died peacefully. Before he could confess. Before he could face what he'd done.
The last thing he ever said to me, his voice thin and bitter, his eyes full of something ugly and afraid, had been, "You witch." "You witch."
As if I were the monster.
Bryan had been there when I received the news. Bryan, with his careless smile and bored eyes, his messy hair and expensive taste, his strange way of caring about me without ever pretending to be noble about it.
"Well," he had said lightly, sipping his coffee like nothing in the world mattered, "that's one way to avoid consequences."
I hadn't laughed.
He had watched me for a long moment before softening, just slightly.
"You did what you could," he said. "That has to be enough."
It wasn't. But it was all I had.
Bryan helped me disappear. He used his connections, his money, and turned strategic, and placed me in a small, obscure company in a town no one cared about. Somewhere, my past couldn't reach me to this place.
Quiet. Forests. Ancient ruins. No clubs, no bars, no crowds. Just routines and silence.
It was supposed to be safe.
The office was small, barely thirty people, calm and polite, almost too peaceful. Everyone greeted me kindly. No one pried. It felt like walking into a place that didn't remember anything.
It felt like relief. Until it didn't.
Taylor arrived first — overdressed, polite, slightly awkward, carrying strange wooden charms and talking about protection as if it were normal. I thought he was just eccentric.
Then Daisy arrived, and the air changed.
She was beautiful in a way that didn't feel natural, her smile too perfect, her voice too gentle. People softened around her, bent toward her, worked themselves to exhaustion just to please her. Pam's anger vanished the moment she spoke. Emily's sarcasm evaporated. Even Taylor stiffened whenever she looked at him.
Only I noticed the wrongness.
Only I felt the pressure in the room shift when she entered.
When she smiled at me, something tightened in my chest — not fear, not jealousy, but recognition, like standing at the edge of a forgotten memory.
That night, Emily dragged me out, down into a hidden place beneath an abandoned house where music pulsed through the walls and laughter echoed in the dark.
And as I stepped into the shadows beneath that quiet town, I finally understood. I hadn't escaped anything.
I had only walked into the next chapter of it. And whatever had promised to find me…
Had already begun.