The dreams didn’t come that night.

  Not like before.

  Not the kind that faded in the light or slipped through fingers like steam. These dreams lingered—too vivid, too specific. Darian saw the chapel again, but the walls were taller, the candles brighter, the symbols carved into the stone itself.

  And she was there.

  Velia.

  Standing at the altar like it belonged to her. Like she’d always been there. Her dress shimmered differently in dream-light—no longer crimson, but deep bck, edged in gold, like funeral silk dipped in fire. Her eyes glowed like molten amber, watching him as though he’d never left.

  “You slept like a child,” she said, amused. “Is that what you are now? Or are you mine yet?”

  Darian tried to speak, but his throat locked. The dream had rules—hers, not his.

  She stepped down from the altar, slow, graceful. Her feet didn’t echo on the stone.

  “You think you understand what you’ve done,” she continued. “But all you’ve done is open a door.”

  He opened his mouth again.

  This time, sound came.

  “What’s on the other side?”

  She stopped just in front of him. Close enough to feel the pull of her warmth—like standing beside a fire that didn’t burn, only tempted.

  “Everything,” she whispered.

  Her hand rose, fingertips brushing his jaw—not touching, but close. “You’ll see soon enough.”

  Then her smile widened, and the dream cracked like gss struck from beneath.

  He woke up sweating.

  The apartment was still dark. The radiator still cold. But the air felt heavier.

  He sat up slowly, breathing hard, and rubbed his eyes. The sigil on his chest pulsed once beneath his shirt—no pain, just presence.

  And then—his phone lit up.

  A number he didn’t recognize.

  He stared at it. Let it ring.

  It stopped.

  Then a message appeared.

  “You’re ready.”

  He didn’t know who sent it.

  But he didn’t need to.

  An hour ter, Darian stood outside a rundown building near Dockside—the kind of pce no one looked twice at, even if someone screamed inside. Three floors. Broken windows. Chain-link gate rusted half-open. It used to be a warehouse. Now it was rot in brick form.

  He didn’t know why he was here.

  Only that he’d followed the feeling.

  The pull.

  The mark on his chest had grown warm the moment he’d turned down the alley.

  That wasn’t coincidence.

  He stepped inside.

  Dust choked the air. The scent of old oil and mold and piss. The lights above buzzed but didn’t work. He moved slowly, eyes adjusting.

  A door creaked open on the far side of the room.

  He tensed.

  Footsteps.

  Then a voice.

  Not hers.

  A man’s.

  “I figured it out too te.”

  Darian didn’t reply. He scanned the shadows.

  The man stepped forward—mid-thirties, suit coat torn, eyes hollow. Pale, like he hadn’t seen daylight in months.

  “You made a deal, didn’t you?” the man asked. “You heard her.”

  Darian said nothing.

  The man smiled, cracked and shaking. “We all think we’re special. That we’ll use her. That we’re the ones holding the leash.”

  He ughed—short, bitter.

  “She doesn’t need to lie. That’s the trick. She lets you do it to yourself.”

  Darian clenched his fists. “Who are you?”

  The man pointed at his own chest.

  There was a mark.

  Not like Darian’s—older. Faded. Twisted.

  “I was you,” he said.

  And then he drew a gun and put it under his chin.

  Darian stepped forward. “Wait—”

  “Don’t make my mistake,” the man said.

  “Don’t fall in love with her.”

  The gun went off.

  The gunshot didn’t echo.

  It nded like a dead thing—abrupt, final. The man’s body hit the floor hard, blood spreading slowly across the cracked concrete. Darian stood frozen in the dim light, breath caught halfway to panic.

  He didn’t move toward the corpse. Didn’t check the pulse.

  Didn’t need to.

  The man had been gone long before he pulled the trigger.

  Darian stared at the fading warmth of the mark on the man’s chest. Twisted. Scarred. A different version of the same curse.

  Velia’s mark.

  A whisper curled around his ear like smoke.

  “He didn’t want to be fed anymore.”

  Darian turned sharply.

  No one there.

  Just shadows.

  He looked back down. The man’s face had already gone sck. Eyes open. Blood pooling beneath his neck. And yet, there was something almost peaceful about it. Like he’d finally escaped something too big to outrun.

  Darian crouched beside the body, inspecting the mark.

  Not just faded. Burned out. Like it had devoured itself from the inside.

  He reached out—hesitated—then touched the man’s chest.

  The sigil flickered.

  And for a split second, Darian felt it.

  The echo.

  Pain. Fear. Pleasure. Memory. All tangled together in a web of addiction and shame. The shape of obsession, not forged but grown—twisting every part of him toward her.

  It wasn’t power that killed him.

  It was devotion.

  Darian pulled his hand away, heart hammering.

  The whisper came again, lower now, like it lived under his skin.

  “Don’t mourn him. He was weak. He confused hunger with love.”

  Darian clenched his jaw. “And I won’t?”

  Silence.

  Then, gently:

  “Not yet.”

  He left the warehouse before sunrise. The streets were quiet, the world not yet awake enough to be dangerous.

  The train was empty. His reflection in the window looked like someone else—older, hollow-eyed, drawn.

  But the mark on his chest was warm.

  Alive.

  He got home just as the sky began to pale. Didn’t turn on the lights. Didn’t wash the blood from his hands. Just sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the floor.

  Not scared.

  Not tired.

  Just... full.

  Like he’d seen the edge of a cliff and finally believed in gravity.

  That night, she came again.

  Not in a dream.

  In the mirror.

  Velia stood behind his reflection, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. Her face was serene. Her voice, calm.

  “He was what happens when a pact is treated like prayer.”

  Darian didn’t speak.

  “Do you think you’re stronger than him?”

  “I think I’m smarter.”

  She smiled. “That’s where it begins.”

  He met her eyes in the gss. “Was he the first?”

  “No,” she said. “And you won’t be the st.”

  “What did he do for you?”

  Her smile widened—just slightly.

  “He killed artists. People who moved the world with color and sound. He believed that beauty was a lie. That if he destroyed enough of it, the world would stop pretending.”

  Darian’s stomach twisted.

  Velia’s voice softened. “He wasn’t wrong.”

  “Did you love him?”

  That made her ugh.

  Not cruelly. Not mockingly.

  Just... like a teacher amused by the question of a child.

  “No,” she said. “I only love those who understand what I am.”

  He turned from the mirror.

  But her voice followed him.

  “You’ll understand. Soon.”