Department of Cultural Anthropology, University of Cumbria
Professor Kamara Durei had been tenured so long most assumed she came with the foundation stones. She taught folklore the way fire teaches warmth—inevitable, elemental. No one quite remembered when she arrived, only that she had always been there. Her name was written in footnotes and curses, in eldritch grant approvals and handwritten field permissions scrawled in ink that shimmered under moonlight. Some whispered she was part of the mythology she taught. Others knew better than to ask.
She looked anywhere between 25 and 55—hard to tell with a woman who hid behind severe buns, sharp tweed suits, and a presence that felt like it should be warded with salt and silver. Students joked she must have a painting aging in the attic, or that she taught the Brothers Grimm personally. A visiting scholar once claimed she vanished from their office mid-sentence and reappeared in the restricted archives three floors down. Kamara never confirmed or denied the story. She just smiled—sharp and unreadable—and filed another grant for 'field continuity monitoring.'
She noticed the ward flicker before the kettle clicked.
It was subtle—the tiniest ripple in the charm stitched around the perimeter of the Humanities building, near the glamoured entrance to the Harrower's section. Had she blinked, she might have missed it. But she did not blink. She never blinked near thresholds.
She set her mug down and crossed to the window. Outside, the quad was the picture of early autumn contentment—late sun filtering through rusted beech leaves, students sprawled on benches or clustered around their screens. But the leyline that cut beneath the west wing was humming too loud. Not with power, but with memory. Something old and definitely out of place was brushing against it.
Kamara's gaze slid toward the south walkway just as a familiar figure approached the faculty doors—head bowed, coat tucked close, a spiral-bound journal hugged to her chest. Grey Wyrde.
Kamara allowed herself a rare, fond smile. Then she noted the shimmer in the girl's hair—the way silver strands caught light that wasn't there. The smile faded.
Grey had changed. And not just in appearance.
She turned from the window and said aloud to the empty room, "Let's see what you've written today, little one."
Grey barely made it ten steps into the department before someone stopped her.
"Grey?" a voice behind her said, unsure. Then louder: "Grey Wyrde?"
She turned, already bracing herself for awkward small talk and the inevitable 'You look different.' A classmate—Anna, she thought, from her Folklore and Urban Legends class—stood there blinking at her like she'd just stepped out of a storybook and hadn't wiped the ink off yet. Grey summoned her best polite-but-vaguely-menacing smile, the one that said 'Yes, I have changed, and no, I won't be unpacking that today.'
"You look… different."
Grey offered her most diplomatic smile. "New conditioner." She snickered internally at her ability to predict this conversation so accurately—half tempted to add 'and daily moonlight rinses, obviously,' but decided to spare Anna the existential spiral.
Anna didn't laugh. Her gaze lingered too long on the threads of light winding through Grey's hair. Grey resisted the urge to fidget, to smooth her hair down like it might muffle the glow. "Right. Well. Good to see you."
Grey smiled again—this time smaller, tighter. She was used to being looked at sideways, but lately the glances felt less curious and more... caution. As if she were halfway between student and specter. It made her skin itch.
Grey slipped away before more questions could catch up. Even in the quiet of the upper stacks, she felt eyes tracking her, whispers catching in her wake. One student muttered something about 'epic glow up, Wyrde'. Another just stared until she vanished behind a shelf, jaw slightly slack, as though caught in some private enchantment.
The air up here felt thinner. Charged. Like someone had rewired the leyline lights and left the circuit humming. Her journal was heavy in her arms. Professor Durei was waiting.
In Kamara's office, the air was scented with sandalwood and ink. Grey placed the field journal on the desk and sat, feeling the leyline hum through the floorboards. Kamara picked up the journal and began flipping through the entries silently, her eyes skimming across diagrams, hastily inked spirals, and notations written in Grey's tidy, slanting hand. Her expression didn't change, but she paused on one page just long enough to make Grey's stomach tighten.
"You've been tracing thread patterns between recorded hauntings and Fae emergence sites," Kamara said, not asking. "Your latest entry drew parallels between two figures. Would you care to elaborate?"
Grey hesitated. "They're mythic echoes. Opposing reflections. One binds by mercy. One by memory. I think they started as one story, but split when memory fractured." She wasn't sure if this was her story to tell—but it had threaded itself into her all the same.
Kamara folded her hands. "You refer to the warlord and the trickster. The thunder-bringer and the cunning heir. The one who defends by force, and the one who survives by knowing too much. We've seen their shadows before—in Norse saga, in Celtic drift-lore. Thor and Loki. Brother-figures made myth. And now you would name them in our time."
Grey nodded, sitting straighter than she needed to, her palms still pressed flat to her knees. Her eyes searched Kamara's face, looking for any flicker of approval—some sign that the work itself, if not the subjects, might be worthy. Her shoulders were tense, chin slightly lifted in defiance she didn't quite feel. "Alaric and Caderyn," she said.
Kamara didn't smile. Her gaze flicked down to the journal, then up again, expression unreadable, carved from something older than flesh and bone. For a moment, she looked absolutely ancient—less professor than monument. "Be careful what you assign names to. Especially when the myths may be watching."
Grey stopped by the restricted archive to retrieve a reference book she needed for her write-up—and immediately noticed something wrong. The sensation hit her like static behind the eyes. She paused mid-step, fingers tightening on the strap of her satchel. Her gut twisted—not with fear, exactly, but recognition. Something here had gone sideways. She tilted her head slightly, the way she did when trying to catch a whisper from behind the Veil.
The binding wards on the door were humming erratically. A spiral of ink near the threshold had faded. Inside, dust lay in strange patterns across the stone floor, as if someone had walked it in a dream.
A TA passed her, face pale. "Did you see Ethan? He went down to the bottom shelves hours ago. Just came back up. Said he'd been gone five minutes. Looked like he'd been crying. And—honestly?—he seemed dazed. Like, high or something. Eyes all glassy, talking slow. Kept saying the air down there felt like honey."
Grey stepped inside. Welp, she thought, here we go.
The shelves whispered. Great, she thought sarcastically, dramatic susurrus as backing track, I love that song.
And at the back of the hall, behind a glamoured curtain of illusion, something moved. Grey stilled, careful not to let her gaze linger too long. The thing didn't know she could see it—not yet—and she wasn't about to give that advantage away. She adjusted the strap on her satchel, feigning distraction, while her fingers hovered close to the charm tucked into her sleeve.
She reached for her spindle instinctively, stepping toward the distortion.
Just as the glamour peeled back, Alaric walked through the glamoured entrance to the hallway.
He did not rush. He arrived.
Of course he did, Grey thought, because why have a quiet moment with a hidden phantom when you could have a thunderclap in boots and smirking menace. The drama radiated off him like heat. She could practically hear the inner soundtrack swell—something orchestral and unnecessarily intense.
Boots echoing, coat swirling, hair loose and midnight-dark. He might as well have been conjured.
Students froze. Several dropped their phones. One girl actually squeaked. A boy from the Comparative Mythology cohort muttered, "What in the fever-dream Fae romance is that?" as Alaric strode past like an omen dipped in leather and moonlight. Whispers followed him like wind through old corridors—half awe, half instinctive dread.
He paid them absolutely no mind and headed straight towards Grey.
She blinked, looking at him as if he'd grown a second head. "Seriously? We're really doing this?" Alaric met her gaze with a look that said later, then turned toward the now-revealed figure half-formed in shadow.
"Hello, Morien," he said, smiling like a wolf, all teeth. "Still hiding in basements?"
The agent snarled, glamour burning away. Alaric didn't flinch. His voice dropped, velvet and vicious, each syllable honed to a weapon. "You're not welcome here." Grey, standing just behind him, noted absently—because apparently adrenaline made room for sarcasm—that he somehow managed to sound both ancient and theatrical, like a warlock delivering a cease-and-desist with centuries of rage behind it. The hallway temperature dropped a degree. She didn't say it aloud, but her spine appreciated the backup.
The being fled through the Veil. Grey released her breath slowly.
Later, outside in the quad, the sun was setting.
Grey crossed her arms, leaning over the bonnet of the Land Rover. "You couldn't have waited around the corner like a normal person? Or maybe just blended in, or telepathically texted me, or—I don't know—not staged a dramatic public dominance display in front of half the Comparative Mythology cohort?"
She sounded annoyed, and maybe she was a bit, but also—if she was honest—secretly pleased. She hadn't missed the way the other students had looked at him—at them both, really—with something close to awe.
Alaric tilted his head, eyes bright. "And deprive every creature here of the knowledge you are not unguarded, mo chride? Never."
He smiled. Slow. Sharp. Every bit the dangerous Unseelie Huntsman.
Every student in a ten-mile radius saw it. Some gasped. Others just gawked, caught between horror and envy. A professor walking past did a double-take, nearly walking into a bench. A girl on a call stage-whispered loudly, "Oh my god, he's gorgeous but he is way too old for her!" while her friend on the other end squealed loud enough to echo.
Girl, you really have no idea, Grey snorted, rolling her eyes with practiced sarcasm—but her fingers tightened slightly where they rested on the bonnet. Her heart was hammering, traitorous and loud, like it hadn't gotten the memo that she was supposed to be emotionally composed.
And somewhere behind her, Kamara Durei watched the pair with narrowed eyes—and the faintest smile.