The lecture hall buzzed with the low hum of half-interested students and flickering fluorescent lights. Levi Rose sat three rows from the back, her notebook open but untouched. Professor Hartwell's voice droned on from the front, speaking passionately about the cultural significance of fire in early religious symbolism, yet Levi barely registered the words.
Her fingers were burning.
It started with a tingle. Then a sting. By the time she glanced down at her hands, it was like someone had dragged a coal across her skin. She hissed quietly and tucked her hands into her hoodie sleeves, trying not to draw attention.
The pain wasn't visible—no marks, no blisters. But it felt as though something inside her had caught fire.
Then it happened.
Her vision blurred. The world around her tilted, and the dull overhead lights melted into silver-blue flames. The students in the room disappeared, replaced by a forest shrouded in mist. The scent of burning herbs, damp earth, and something metallic filled her senses.
She wasn't herself anymore.
She was someone else—taller, cloaked, running barefoot through trees under a blood-red moon. Her hands—older, thinner—held a woven bundle of herbs ignited by unnatural fire. Voices shouted in the distance, torches bobbing like fireflies in the dark. She turned to a crumbling stone archway half-buried in moss, carving a symbol into its surface with her bleeding thumb.
"The fire remembers. The thread is never lost."
The woman turned—no, Levi turned—just as a blade sliced across her ribs, and—
Snap.
She was back.
Levi gasped, slamming her notebook shut and knocking her pen to the floor. A few students glanced over, startled, but Professor Hartwell kept speaking, oblivious. Levi's palms trembled beneath her desk, the warmth fading, but the memory—the vision—lingered like smoke behind her eyes.
She looked down again.
A faint shimmer traced across her skin—thin, ember-like threads glowing just beneath the surface of her fingertips, vanishing as quickly as they came.
Had she dreamed it?
It didn't feel like a dream. It felt like a memory. But it wasn't hers.
Levi sat frozen for the rest of class, the professor's words about fire's sacred power now chilling her to the bone. Something ancient had touched her—through her. And it wasn't done.
Not yet.
The bass thumped beneath Rue Pendragon's boots as he descended the spiral staircase leading to the VIP lounge of Inferna, the underground nightclub he owned and ruled. It was past midnight, and the room pulsed with magic and heat. The humans above thought they came for music and ecstasy—but the true elite came for power. Deals whispered in tongues. Lust carved in sigils. Blood poured in shadows.
Rue wasn't just a club owner. He was a demon of the old dominions—long banished, rarely spoken of, but feared in ancient circles. Most didn't know his name anymore, but the ones who mattered still bowed their heads when he passed.
He lit a silver cigarette, the smoke curling unnaturally upward. Then he froze.
A sharp pulse tore through his chest like a lightning crack, not pain but recognition—an ancient thread snapping taut. His vision blurred for a moment, and in that instant, he saw her.
A girl. A sigil. Fire threading through her veins.
He knew what it was.
An awakening.
He crushed the cigarette between his fingers, unbothered by the heat. The scent of burning ash was swallowed by the club's thick, enchanted air. He turned sharply and walked through a curtain of crimson beads that separated the lounge from the Sanctum—a hidden chamber reserved for rites too dangerous for mortal eyes.
Inside, the walls shimmered with runes etched in bone. Candles flickered in impossible colors. At the center, seated on a velvet throne covered in crow feathers, was the Oracle.
She was blind—her sockets hollow—but her voice was silk threaded with terror.
"I felt it," Rue said, voice low and dark. "Someone's touched the thread. Someone old."
The Oracle smiled.
"She was always going to wake," the woman rasped. "It was only a matter of when."
"Who is she?"
"Witch born of flame. Daughter of time. Heir to the forbidden path."
Rue's jaw clenched.
"She is the gate," the Oracle whispered, swaying as though in trance. "She is the lock and the key. She opens what you sealed. She summons what you ran from."
Rue's eyes darkened to obsidian.
"And if I kill her?"
The Oracle laughed, a sound like bones breaking.
"You won't. You can't. The gate is blood. And your blood's already inside it."
Rue turned away sharply, the Oracle's words burning into his thoughts. He could feel the ancient bindings loosening. Whatever Levi Rose was, she wasn't just another witch.
She was the beginning—and maybe the end.
And she had no idea who she was walking toward.
The night air outside the dormitory was unnaturally still. Streetlamps flickered, casting long, twitching shadows on the cobblestone paths of the old university grounds. From her room on the third floor, Levi slept uneasily—tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, her hand twitching as if still feeling fire beneath her skin.
Outside her window, the ivy on the brick walls stirred though no wind passed.
Downstairs, the old wooden door creaked open, though it had been locked and magically warded by university standards. A figure moved silently through the hallway, long black coat brushing the floor, boots silent as death. No cameras flickered. No alarms screamed. The shadows bent around the intruder.
The hood obscured the stranger's face, but their presence was wrong—like a hole in the world where warmth should be. They passed the rooms of snoring students without pause… until they reached Levi's.
The door trembled as the stranger laid a gloved hand upon it.
Inside, Levi murmured in her sleep, her brow furrowing. The sigil—faint and glowing—flickered on her palm beneath the covers.
The lock clicked open without touch.
The door creaked inward.
The figure stepped in.
Then—it hit.
An unseen force exploded from the center of the room, slamming into the intruder with the weight of a collapsing star. The air vibrated with soundless power, the walls flashing with a pale blue sigil etched into the air itself—ancient, protective, alive.
The hooded figure was thrown back, crashing into the hallway and skidding across the wooden floor. They groaned, stunned. Smoke curled from their cloak. From within the folds, a blade glimmered faintly—its edge not of steel but obsidian.
The stranger looked up, eyes flashing briefly red beneath the hood.
"She doesn't even know what she is," they hissed, vanishing in a spiral of smoke and shadow.
Inside the room, Levi gasped awake.
She sat bolt upright, hand over her chest, eyes wide with panic. Her lamp flickered violently before steadying. Nothing was out of place. No one was there.
But on the windowpane, drawn in fog, were words that hadn't been there before:
The hour is broken.
And for a second—just a breath—she heard a whisper in the room that wasn't hers:
"Find the grimoire before they find you."