Chapter 1
1600 Words
The rain came down in sheets, each drop slicing through the air like it had somewhere urgent to be. Thunder cracked across the New Avalon skyline, sending windows trembling in their panes. Down on 5th and Cross, just outside the city’s pulse, Calla Reyes yanked her hoodie tighter over her head and pushed through the wind.
Tonight’s shift had ended in disaster—again. Another table walked out without paying. Her manager blamed her. The ceiling had leaked. Someone had screamed when a rat scurried under the counter. Typical Thursday. Her sneakers splashed through a shallow puddle as she turned the corner toward the alley shortcut, ignoring the rumble of thunder overhead and the tension twisting in her gut like piano wire.
She should’ve taken the main road. She always told herself that. But the alley saved five minutes, and five minutes was everything when your entire life ran on borrowed time. Rent was due in two days. Her sister was messaging nonstop about mom’s medicine. Her bank account had less than twenty bucks.
She didn’t have the luxury of caution.
Lightning flashed—and that’s when she saw him.
A silhouette, barely visible through the sheet of rain. Tall. Broad shoulders. Still as stone, standing halfway down the alley where the brick turned black with mildew. He wasn’t moving. Not shifting weight. Not hiding.
Just watching her.
Calla froze. Her breath caught.
Her instincts screamed: Leave. Run. Go back.
But something rooted her in place—something not entirely fear.
Because even from this distance, the man didn’t feel like a threat.
He felt like gravity.
He stepped forward.
The rain seemed to part around him, like the storm bent to avoid him. His coat was soaked, but he moved like he didn’t feel the cold. His eyes caught the next flash of lightning—and they weren’t brown, or blue, or gray. They were silver. Alive. Burning with some unnatural light that had no business on this side of reality.
“Calla Reyes,” he said, voice smooth as silk and sharp as the edge of a blade. “I’ve been looking for you.”
She took a step back. “Who the hell are you?”
He didn’t answer.
Just closed the space between them like he knew the alley belonged to him. Like she belonged to him.
“I’m not in the mood to be mugged,” she said, fingers tightening in her hoodie pocket around the tiny can of pepper spray she always carried.
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Then stop following me through alleys at night.”
He paused. “Fair.”
For a moment, they stood there, the storm silent between them. Then he reached into his coat, slowly, deliberately, and pulled out something that glinted under the streetlight—a pendant. Bronze and black, shaped like a serpent swallowing its own tail.
She flinched. “What is that?”
“Yours.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve got the wrong girl.”
“No,” he said, stepping forward again, voice softer now. “You’re Calla Reyes. Daughter of Evelyn. Born October 3rd, 1998. Raised by your aunt after the fire. And whether you like it or not, your bloodline binds you to this.”
He held the pendant out.
The moment she touched it, the air shifted. The wind stopped. The storm froze. For half a second, the world blinked—and she was no longer in the alley.
She saw a woman screaming in candlelight. A man coughing blood. A field of bones buried beneath an ancient tree. A boy, no older than ten, standing alone in a circle of salt, whispering a name over and over: Ares. Ares. Ares.
Calla staggered back.
The pendant clattered to the wet ground.
Her chest heaved. Her throat burned.
“What the hell was that?”
“A memory,” he said. “Or a warning.”
“You drugged me.”
He smiled—not cruelly, but like he expected that answer. “I don’t need drugs to show you the truth.”
She should’ve walked away. Run. Screamed. But something in her—some ancient part of her bones—recognized the storm he brought with him.
And something else, too.
Fate.
Calla knelt slowly, picked up the pendant, and stood. Her hand shook.
“I want answers. Now.”
He nodded once, eyes serious. “Then come with me.”
She laughed, bitter. “Right. Follow the creepy stranger in the alley into the night. Not happening.”
“I can explain everything,” he said, stepping back into the rain, letting it soak through him now. “But you need to decide quickly, Calla. Because they’ve already found you. And you have no idea what’s coming next.”
As if summoned by his words, a shriek split the air. Not human. Not animal. A high-pitched wail, distant but closing fast.
Calla’s stomach dropped.
“What the f**k was that?”
“Run,” he said.
She didn’t argue.
They took off down the alley, her lungs burning, his coat flapping behind him like wings. The city blurred past. She didn’t know where they were going. She didn’t care. Behind them, the shrieking grew louder. Closer. Like talons scraping glass.
They reached a black car parked on the edge of the curb. Ares—he hadn’t said his name, but she knew it now, somehow—threw the passenger door open, shoved her inside, and slammed it shut.
By the time he hit the gas, something slammed into the back of the car.
Calla screamed.
Through the rear window, she saw a face—pale, eyeless, mouth stretched wide in a scream that never stopped. Its hands clawed at the glass, leaving frost behind.
“What the hell is that?!”
“Not human,” Ares said, not blinking. “And not alone.”
Another hit. Then another.
The car skidded as he made a sharp turn.
“Where are we going?!”
“Somewhere safe. Somewhere the curse can’t follow.”
“The what?!”
“The Devlin Curse,” he said. “It’s tied to me. To you now. That’s what the pendant awakened.”
She stared at him. “You’re insane.”
“Probably.”
They drove for miles in silence.
The rain let up, but her mind didn’t. Every second felt stretched, like reality was slipping sideways. She held the pendant in her lap, watching the way the serpent’s eye pulsed faintly.
“Start talking,” she said finally.
Ares didn’t look at her. “My name is Ares Devlin. My bloodline is cursed. Every generation is haunted. Hunted. We don’t know why. Only that it started centuries ago, after my ancestor made a deal he didn’t understand. A blood pact with something older than the world.”
Calla’s throat went dry. “And me?”
“You’re descended from the other half of the pact. The witness. The balance. The only one who can see what’s coming before it arrives.”
“See it?”
“In dreams. Visions. Blood. You’ll start to feel it soon.”
“Great.”
They pulled into a gated property on the city’s edge. Stone walls covered in ivy. A worn-out manor looming in the darkness.
“My safehouse,” Ares said. “Ward-etched. Protected. Nothing gets in without bleeding first.”
He led her inside.
The place smelled like firewood and cold metal. She followed him through a dim hall to a library where maps were pinned to every surface and books lined the walls like soldiers.
Ares lit a fire.
“Why me?” she asked, voice soft now. “Why tonight?”
“Because you turned twenty-seven yesterday,” he said. “That’s when the Devlin curse always awakens in the balance. And because I saw you in a vision two nights ago, standing over my grave.”
She froze. “Excuse me?”
“You were crying,” he said. “Calling my name.”
Calla sat slowly. “This is a nightmare.”
“I wish it were.”
He walked to a locked cabinet, pulled out a leather-bound book, and dropped it on the table. Inside were names. Dozens. Hundreds. Some crossed out. Some smeared with red.
Calla Reyes wasn’t in it.
But there was a blank space waiting.
“I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“Neither did I.”
They stared at each other across the flickering fire.
Then—too sudden—her vision shifted again. The room twisted. The candlelight exploded outward. She saw a field. A grave. Her own hands covered in blood.
She screamed.
Ares caught her before she hit the floor.
Her body trembled.
“It’s starting,” he said.
“I saw—I saw—”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t let go.
And for a moment, even though she wanted to hate him, she clung to him like he was the only anchor in a world unraveling beneath her feet.
Later that night, once the fire had burned low, Ares stood at the window again, staring at the moon through the broken storm clouds.
Calla watched him, her voice low. “What happens now?”
He didn’t turn. “Now? We find the relic. We trace the curse to its source. We end it before it ends us.”
She swallowed. “And if we can’t?”
He looked at her then, silver eyes glowing in the dark.
“Then we die.”
- Writer
