"And he said, 'What have you done? The voice of your
brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground.'"
— Genesis 4:10 (NKJV)
Time: 5:17 AM
Location: Thalia's Apartment, Bloomsbury
The dream was made of ash and screaming.
Thalia stood in a field of withered earth — endless,
broken soil beneath a sky that never fully lightened. Faces surrounded her. Not
real ones — not alive ones — but
ghost faces: blurred, cracked like old photographs soaked in vinegar.
They whispered.
They wept.
They called her name, even when they couldn't
remember who they were.
"Murderer."
"Bearer."
"You were the last."
Thalia tried to back away, but her feet sank into
the earth. It wasn't mud. It was bones. Thousands of them. As she looked down,
the soil writhed. Hands emerged — small, large, charred, rotten — all reaching
upward.
Clutching.
Dragging.
"Give it back."
"We were forgotten."
"You carry our screams."
A child's voice cut through the others. It was a
whisper, but it slammed through her skull like thunder.
"You killed us."
"I didn't!" Thalia cried, clutching her head. "I
don't even know you—"
"Exactly."
Then silence.
Except for one sound — a soft drip.
Thalia looked up.
The sky above cracked like glass, and from it poured
blood. Not in torrents. Just
steady, rhythmic drops. Each one landing with a name.
One drop: Aline of Carthage.
Two: Bastien, son of Bastien.
Three: Rebekah of Acre.
Four: Thalia.
Her name.
In her own voice.
The blood hit her face — hot and ancient — and as it
touched her skin, memory rushed in
like floodwater.
A woman burning at the stake, clutching a dagger as
she whispers a prayer in Old French.
A knight impaled through the chest, smiling with
relief as he dies and passes the curse to his killer.
A slave girl with gold eyes standing in a temple,
surrounded by corpses — weeping as her chains dissolve.
A man in Victorian London writing his name in blood
over and over again before drinking poison, whispering, "Forget
me."
A scream caught in her throat before she fully woke.
Thalia jolted upright, tangled in sweat-damp sheets,
heart pounding as if she'd run a marathon through broken time. For a breathless
moment, the shadows of her dream clung to her skin — ashes and fire, a child
crying for mercy, and voices whispering her name with blood-wet mouths.
"Avenge me."
"You bear our sin."
"You wear his curse."
"You killed us."
She sat up in bed, chest heaving, soaked in sweat.
The early light was barely leaking through the blinds, pale and cold.
The room was still.
The world was real again.
But the dream — no, the memory — clung to her like oil.
A boy weeping over his brother's corpse.
A woman burned alive, clutching a blade with utrembling
hands.
A child screaming for mercy while shadows dragged
her into nothing
Thalia exhaled sharply, pressing trembling fingers
to her forehead. The dream was fading — as they always did — but fragments
clung like blood beneath her nails.
Her hand trembled as she reached for her phone.
4:56 AM.
Thalia drew her knees to her chest, curling into the
fading warmth of the sheets, trying to convince herself she was still in her
room. Still in London. Still in 2025.
Still just… a girl.
But she wasn't. Not anymore.
The room around her was dim, the dawn light a pale
bruise against the blinds. She sat there for a moment longer, listening — not
for sounds, but for silence. The silence that always followed the dreams. A
silence she'd grown to fear more than noise.
Then: a knock on the wall.
"Thal?" Jazz's voice was muffled, but close. "Did
you scream or was that just the sound of existential dread again?"
Thalia forced herself to reply, voice hoarse. "Just
a dream."
Jazz was silent for a beat. "Was it the same one?"
Thalia hesitated. "Yeah. Worse this time."
Jazz didn't pry. She never did. "I'll make tea.
You've got class in an hour."
"Thanks."
She stayed curled there for a minute longer,
listening to Jazz clatter around the kitchenette. The smell of ginger and honey
crept through the door like a balm.
There were never any wraiths in the morning.
Only memories.
—————
University
College London
Midmorning
– Room 2B
The Ashcroft Lecture
Hall hummed with quiet activity as students filed in — notebooks half-filled,
coffees half-drunk, ambitions half-formed. Outside, rain licked the
stained-glass windows, casting fractured prisms across the old oak floor.
Thalia sat near the
window — her usual spot — already settled before most students had even
arrived. Her dark sweater was oversized, sleeves tugged over her hands as she
scrawled lazy notes in the margin of her notebook. Spirals again. Always
spirals.
Jazz called them
"wraith-echoes."
Thalia called them
habit.
"—between offering
and obedience," Dr. Mycroft was saying at the front, pointer clicking against
the slide. "Early rites didn't ask for blood because the gods wanted it. They
asked for it because the people believed it
worked."
Thalia's pen
hovered.
Belief.
That word always
tasted strange.
The air shifted
beside her.
She didn't need to
look up — she already knew the weight of his presence. Caleb
Moreau.
He always arrived two minutes late and smelled faintly of old books and clean
soap. Somehow both timeless and present, like a relic that still pulsed.
"Morning," he
whispered, sliding into the seat beside her. Close, but never touching. Always
respectful. Always… aware.
"Morning," she
murmured back, lips barely moving.
"You okay? You
looked a little out of it."
She nodded, but
didn't meet his eyes. "Didn't sleep well."
"Nightmares?"
She didn't answer.
Not directly. But her silence said enough.
Caleb leaned
slightly, voice soft. "You know… if you ever want to talk about it, I'm a great
listener. I specialize in brooding historical trauma."
That earned a ghost
of a smile from her. "And here I thought you were a history major, not a
therapist."
He chuckled. "Dual
specialization."
She almost said something
else. Something true. But instead, she scribbled a line across her page,
breaking the moment like a matchstick.
That was the way it
always was — warmth at the edge of something deeper. And Thalia never let it
cross the line.
Not because she
didn't want to.
But because people
who got too close to her… paid for it.
Before Caleb could
press further, a new voice cut across the space behind them — high, sweet, and
sugar-poisoned.
"Caleb."
Cassandra
DuVere.
Her heels clicked against the floor like punctuation marks. She stopped just
behind him, designer bag slung over one arm, lips lacquered into a tight,
polite smile.
Caleb didn't turn.
"Hey, Cassandra."
"I didn't see you at
the advisory brunch yesterday. Dean Hawthorne asked about you." She leaned
forward a little too far. "You know how he gets when the Moreaus don't make a
showing."
"I had class," Caleb
replied, tone flat but polite. His eyes didn't leave Thalia's page.
Cassandra's smile
pinched. "Right. Of course. Well—" she cast a glance at Thalia that felt like a
dry blade "—if you ever need someone to help you… catch up on your
duties, I'd be happy to assist."
Caleb's only
response was a half-humored hum. Barely a syllable. No gratitude. No
invitation.
Cassandra lingered
for another beat, waiting for acknowledgment that didn't come. Then she turned
sharply and walked off, the perfume she wore trailing behind like false spring.
Thalia arched a
brow. "She always this subtle?"
Caleb finally
smiled, his voice low. "She's campaigning. I'm just not voting."
The bell rang.
Students shuffled out.
Caleb lingered,
glancing at Thalia. "You free after class?"
She hesitated.
"Maybe. Why?"
"There's a guest
lecture next week. Dr. Verity's doing that talk on medieval visions. Thought of
you."
That surprised her
more than she let on.
"I'll think about
it."
"Cool," he said,
standing. "No pressure."
And he walked away —
no backward glance, no awkward pause — just trust in the rhythm they'd built
between them.
Thalia watched him
go, a small ache settling behind her ribs.
Jazz once joked they
were the slowest non-couple in recorded history.
And sometimes… it
felt true.