Chapter 2
1762 Words
The rain had stopped, but the cold lingered.
Calla stood by the fire, her arms wrapped around herself as if that alone could keep her from unraveling. The pendant still hung around her neck, its serpent eye pulsing every few minutes with a glow she didn’t understand—and wasn’t ready to try.
Behind her, Ares moved quietly, tending to something in the corner of the room, but she felt him. Even when he was silent, he took up space. Like he was built to own the shadows.
“Is this what your life looks like?” she asked without turning. “Running from monsters, hiding in mansions?”
He didn’t answer at first. Then, quietly, “Only the ones inside me.”
She looked over her shoulder.
He wasn’t watching her—but she could see the flicker of something raw in his profile. Guilt, maybe. Or memory. He wasn’t just carrying a curse. He was wearing it like armor, forged from every death it left behind.
“I’m still not convinced this isn’t just a really elaborate psychotic break,” she muttered, dropping into the leather chair near the hearth. “Like, maybe I hit my head and now I’m hallucinating hot, brooding stalkers who talk about curses and bloodlines.”
Ares arched an eyebrow. “Hot?”
She groaned and threw her head back. “Forget I said that.”
He didn’t smile. But something shifted in the corners of his mouth. Just barely.
“I need answers,” she said, voice tightening. “Real ones. No more cryptic riddles. No more dramatic warnings. What is this curse exactly? Why is it tied to you—and me? What does it want?”
Ares crossed the room and took a seat across from her, folding his hands slowly. The flames threw light across his face, casting deep shadows across his jawline, like even fire didn’t trust him fully.
“The curse was born four hundred years ago,” he began. “An ancestor of mine, Silas Devlin, made a pact with an entity known only as Veyr. The records say he wanted power. Immortality. Knowledge of the unseen. The usual sins.”
“And let me guess,” Calla said. “He got what he asked for, but not how he expected.”
“He got everything. And he lost everything. His wife, his child, his own soul—if he had one left to lose. From that moment on, the Devlin line was marked.”
He leaned forward, eyes locking with hers.
“Every generation, the eldest born inherits the mark—usually around their twenty-seventh birthday. With it comes unnatural strength, heightened senses, prophetic dreams, and the ability to open pathways between realms. But the mark doesn’t come freely. It draws the attention of them—the Hollowed.”
“The ones chasing us,” she whispered.
He nodded. “They feed on the cursed. On pain. On the bloodline itself. And you—you're the counterweight. The witness. The one who sees what the marked cannot.”
“I didn’t ask to see anything.”
“You didn’t ask to be born either.”
Her throat tightened. “So what happens to me? I just become your sidekick in a demon-hunting drama I didn’t audition for?”
“It’s not a choice anymore. The moment you touched that pendant, the pact recognized your blood.”
“I didn’t touch it by choice.”
He nodded slowly. “I know.”
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the crackle of firewood.
“You’re telling me that my whole life—every nightmare, every shadow I thought I saw, every sleepwalking episode, every hallucination—wasn’t me going insane. It was this.”
“Yes,” he said. “The visions get stronger now that the curse has awakened in both of us.”
Calla laughed bitterly. “That’s comforting.”
“You’re not alone anymore.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
She swallowed. “So… what now?”
“We start hunting. Tracing the relic’s location. Unraveling what’s left of Silas’s pact. There’s a trail of symbols, texts, bloodlines. But the further we go, the more dangerous it gets.”
“And if we don’t?”
Ares leaned back in his chair, the light vanishing from his eyes.
“Then the Hollowed don’t just take us. They take the city. The world. Reality begins to… fold.”
Calla stared into the fire. She should’ve felt numb. Should’ve been paralyzed by everything he said. But instead, there was something deeper rising in her. A calling.
Maybe it was the pendant’s pull. Or something older. Something in her blood she’d spent a lifetime ignoring.
“Show me,” she said finally.
He looked at her.
“Whatever this is. Whatever we’re facing. I don’t want to sit here and be protected. I want to see it. I want to fight.”
He didn’t smile. But his nod was slow and certain.
“There’s someone we need to visit,” he said. “A Seer. She knew your mother.”
Calla’s chest tightened. “My mother died when I was four.”
“She died… but not before she tried to protect you from all this. She was the last balance before you. And she knew the price.”
Calla looked down at her hands. Suddenly, they felt unfamiliar. Like she didn’t know where her skin ended and fate began.
“Where is this Seer?”
Ares stood. “We leave at midnight.”
---
The manor had a guest room that looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. The bed was draped in sheer black, the sheets cold as silk left out in moonlight. A dresser with an old mirror stood against the wall, and the corners of the glass were cracked like it didn’t want to reflect too much.
Calla sat on the edge of the bed, pendant warm against her chest, staring at herself.
“You’re not insane,” she whispered.
The mirror flickered.
She leaned forward, heart hammering.
Behind her reflection… a flicker of movement.
She turned. Nothing.
Her breath caught.
Then her own reflection smiled at her.
But she didn’t.
Calla backed away from the mirror, heart racing.
The glass cracked deeper.
She grabbed a cloth from the drawer and threw it over the mirror. Her skin prickled as if something was watching through it.
A knock came at the door.
Ares.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good. You shouldn’t be.”
She opened the door. His coat was already on, hair damp from a shower, the scent of cloves and cold steel clinging to him. He handed her a coat. Black, tailored, warm.
She hesitated, then slipped it on.
He didn’t look at her too long.
They walked out into the night together.
---
The city was a different beast after midnight.
New Avalon’s neon pulse had faded, leaving only the bones behind. They drove in silence, streets empty. Ares didn’t speak until they reached the outskirts—a crumbling stone bridge that led to a shadowed forest.
“No streetlights?” Calla asked.
“They stopped working five years ago. The Seer’s home is past the tree line.”
“Let me guess. Creepy cottage in the woods?”
“Something like that.”
They parked.
The trees swallowed them within seconds. Calla’s breath fogged. Every crunch of leaves underfoot felt louder than it should. Like the forest was listening.
They reached a crooked path lit by pale blue candles hovering mid-air. The flames didn’t flicker.
At the end of the path stood a house made of ash-wood and bone.
“She’s in there?” Calla whispered.
Ares nodded. “Prepare yourself. She doesn’t… see time the way we do.”
They stepped inside.
The air was thick with incense and whispers. Candles lined the walls. On the far end, wrapped in black veils, sat the Seer. Her face hidden, her voice like silk on shattered glass.
“Ares Devlin. And the girl who breaks the loop.”
Calla froze. “The what?”
“You’ve seen it already,” the Seer murmured. “Your hands in blood. The grave. The burning sigil. You carry the future, but you remember the past.”
Ares stepped forward. “We need the next location.”
The Seer’s veil shifted. “Everything has a price.”
Calla felt something twist inside her.
The Seer pointed at her. “For you, the price is memory. One truth for one vision.”
Ares’s jaw tightened. “She’s not ready.”
“She doesn’t have time to be ready.”
Calla nodded, stepping forward. “Fine. Show me.”
The Seer reached out.
Fingertips touched her temple.
And the world shattered.
---
She was in a bedroom. Her mother was there. Crying. Whispering words in a language Calla didn’t know but somehow understood.
“I’m sorry,” her mother said, voice trembling. “I wanted you to have a life without the curse. But they found us.”
Blood smeared the walls. Outside, something was shrieking.
The door slammed open.
And standing there—was Ares.
But older.
Bleeding.
Holding a baby in his arms.
Her.
---
Calla collapsed on the floor of the Seer’s cottage, gasping.
Ares caught her before she hit the ground.
“What did you see?” he asked.
“My mother. She… she knew you.”
He closed his eyes. “I hoped she wouldn’t show you that yet.”
“You were there. The night she died.”
“I was trying to save you.”
The Seer spoke again. “Your paths are bound, across lifetimes. Across deaths. The blood calls to itself.”
Ares looked at Calla, pain deep behind his eyes.
“I failed her. I swore I wouldn’t fail you.”
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
The Seer placed something in her hand.
A small, glowing shard of glass.
“The next clue is hidden in the reflection of the broken moon. Go west. Find the Vale. The Hollowed gather there.”
Calla’s fingers closed around it.
As they stepped back into the forest, she asked the question burning on her tongue.
“Why didn’t you tell me about my mother?”
Ares stopped walking.
“I didn’t want you to see me the way she did.”
“And how did she see you?”
He looked at her then, raw.
“As a monster trying to be something else.”
- Writer
