The morning after the nightmare—and the whisper—Levi awoke to silence.
Not the comforting quiet of early dawn, but a heavy, strained stillness, like the air itself was holding its breath.
Her room was dim. Curtains drawn. The bedside lamp she'd left on all night had burnt out, leaving a faint scorch on the wall behind it. She rubbed her eyes and sat up slowly, her muscles sore like she'd run miles in her sleep.
Then she saw it.
Her wrist—right above the pulse point—was scorched with a symbol.
Not a bruise. Not a tattoo. A mark, raw and seared like it had been branded by fire itself.
She stared, heart pounding, breath locked in her throat.
It wasn't random. The shape was exact—interlocking crescents and thorns, circling a central star. It shimmered faintly beneath the skin like cooled magma, fading in and out of visibility.
The same sigil from her dream.
The same one that hovered in the air when the intruder was repelled.
The same one on the woman's bloodied hands in that forest vision.
Levi reached out and brushed her fingertips over it. Heat surged into her veins—not painful, but alive. She felt something ancient stir behind her ribcage, something both terrifying and… exhilarating.
She stumbled to the mirror. Pulled her hoodie sleeve back.
Still there.
"I'm dreaming," she whispered. "This isn't real. It can't be real."
But her reflection betrayed her.
Her eyes shimmered—not with tears, but with light. Barely perceptible silver rings circled her pupils for a flicker of a moment, and then vanished.
The sigil flared again as her panic rose. She grabbed a towel, soaked it under cold water, and pressed it to her skin. No change. No fading.
It was part of her now.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, nearly making her scream.
Unknown number. One message:
Do not hide it. You've been chosen.
— SC
Levi stared. Who was SC?
A jolt of memory hit—Scout. The guy who watched her from across the campus lawns. The one with that half-smile like he knew secrets he wasn't sharing.
He knows something.
But before she could reply, the message vanished. Deleted itself.
The mark pulsed one more time, and Levi knew—her world wasn't just changing. It was remembering her.
And soon, so would the rest of it.
Prairie Smith had never believed in magic.
Not because she wasn't open to the strange—she devoured myths, folklore, urban legends—but because magic had never shown itself to her. And when it came to the supernatural, she needed proof, not just pretty lies in books.
So when the university librarian called her that morning, asking if she could "look into a minor power anomaly," she didn't hesitate. Prairie was a tech intern, not a ghostbuster, but something about the way the librarian whispered—*"It happened in the sub-basement again"—*piqued her curiosity.
She grabbed her access badge and descended the stairwell behind the archives. Most students didn't even know the basement existed, much less what lay below it. When she opened the rusted gate to the lower levels, a wave of cold hit her like a wall.
The lights were out.
Her flashlight flickered to life, cutting a cone through the dust-heavy air. She stepped cautiously between old shelves of forgotten texts and caged relics. The scent of mildew clung thick in her throat, but beneath it, something else lingered—burnt ozone. Like something had shorted out… or exploded.
As she reached the far wall, Prairie noticed a scorch mark in the shape of a circle etched into the stone floor.
Not mechanical. Not electrical.
Deliberate.
Above it, the nearest bookshelf looked… wrong. As if something had erupted outward from its center. Tomes and scrolls lay scattered and blackened. And buried beneath a pile of ash and parchment fragments was a thick, half-burned journal bound in deep green leather.
She knelt, brushing off debris.
The cover had a sigil stitched into it—a crescent and thorns, the same design Levi would see later that night. But Prairie didn't know that yet.
She opened it carefully. Most of the pages were charred or missing, but the few that remained were filled with tight, elegant handwriting… and diagrams. Constellations. Symbols.
And one passage still legible, circled in dark red ink:
"Only the one born under the Burning Moon may unseal the Grimoire. The bloodline must awaken, or all doors remain shut."
Prairie's heart thudded.
Grimoire? Bloodline? Burning Moon?
She should've stopped there. Should've reported it, handed the book over to faculty. But something inside her whispered:
This wasn't an accident. You were meant to find this.
And just as she turned to leave, a faint breeze brushed past her ear.
Soft. Chilling.
A voice—not spoken, but felt:
"Watcher of the gate… your eyes must remain open."
She turned fast.
No one was there.
The lights above flickered once… and came back on.
But the scorch mark remained.
And so did the journal.
The alley behind Lucent Hall was darker than the rest of campus.
Here, the hum of streetlights dulled to silence. The shadows didn't just fall—they lingered, pooling in corners and stretching too long across the walls. No one came this way after dusk. Except him.
Scout Cromwell crouched beside the dumpsters, his coat blending into the grime-slick brick. His fangs were still bared, glinting faintly in the dark, and his eyes—silver-rimmed, wolf-sharp—locked onto the pulse of the boy he held against the wall.
The boy trembled, caught in a trance. No scream, no struggle. Just the dazed bliss of a gaze snared by a vampire's will.
Scout leaned close. The scent of fear, of adrenaline laced with alcohol, stirred hunger like coals in a dying fire. One bite. One pull. One second of weakness…
But he didn't bite.
Not this time.
Instead, he took a slow breath, let the ache in his throat burn through him, and whispered, "Sleep."
The boy's eyes fluttered. Scout eased him down onto the cold pavement, letting him slump unconscious. Then he stepped back into the deeper dark of the alley and wiped his hands clean.
A soft voice echoed in his mind—Rue's voice, smooth and commanding.
"You're not a hunter, Scout. You're a guide. Feed only when needed. Protect the girl. She's fire waiting for a fuse."
Scout clenched his jaw, the echo of his craving still trembling through his veins. He hadn't fed in three days. Rue's restraint was admirable—infuriating—but Scout followed it. Always had.
He glanced up. The full moon had dipped behind clouds, casting the alley in complete shadow.
He could feel it in the air—change.
Magic was rising again. The kind that hadn't stirred in centuries.
He pulled out his phone and stared at the message thread with Rue—blank, except for one final message sent last night.
"It begins with the sigil. She's dreaming of Eloria. Stay close."
Scout tucked the phone away and disappeared into the dark, his boots making no sound on the concrete.
Behind him, the unconscious boy began to murmur one word in his sleep:
"Burning..."