Flashback***
The orphanage, usually a cacophony of children sneaking into the kitchen to steal cookies and their bedtime giggles, had fallen into a silence so deep it pressed against her ears.
No laughter. No late-night lullabies. Not even the distant hum of the radio Sister Marlene always left on. Only the sound of her own breath and the coppery scent that clung to the air.
Aeris's bare feet made no sound against the icy floor as she padded down the corridor. The chill of the floor seeped up through her skin. The fabric of her owl-print pajamas clung to her like they were afraid too.
The hallway bulb above her gave a dying buzz, each flicker casting the walls in jumpy shadows like something might lurch out any second.
Aeris turned to the corner and saw her. Sister Marlene.
She lay sprawled on the cold kitchen tiles, head tilted at an unnatural angle, Marlene's white blouse was soaked through, crimson blooming across her stomach. One pale hand stretched toward the stove, fingers curled as if trying to grasp the last seconds of her life. Her eyes, once warm, endlessly kind, were open. Empty. Staring.
Aeris froze, her scream stayed lodged in her throat. She was just standing there. Small. Shaking. Eleven. A child with a monster curled up under her ribs. And it was smiling.
Something warm trickled down her wrist. She looked down.
Red. Thick. Warm. Her hands were covered in it, painted up to the elbows. Aeris didn't remember walking closer, but suddenly she was there. She knelt beside Marlene's cold body, stupidly, trying to shake her awake, shouting her name over and over through chattering teeth. "Marie…please…wake up, wake up.."
Her tears only smeared it worse, soaking her cheeks. It was everywhere now. In her mouth, her cheeks, her hair.
Even at eleven, something inside her knew—this moment would never leave her. It would be tattooed onto her soul.
They found her like that, curled beside Marlene's body– her tiny frame smeared in blood. Someone called the police. Someone else muttered a prayer, eyes wide with something worse than fear. The way they backed away like Aeris had sprouted horns.
They said she was possessed, cursed. The girl who killed her caretaker.
*****
HUFFF!!!
Aeris jolted awake, breath tearing from her throat in a hoarse, strangled gasp. Her fingers scrabbled instinctively at the seatbelt. For one terrifying moment, she didn't know where she was.
Reality filtered in slowly, the interior of the car swam into focus. Her eyes darted, until they caught her reflection in the dark sheen of the window. Pale face. Sweaty brow. Haunted eyes.
Aeris was eighteen already, not eleven anymore. But the phantom memory of blood was still there. Her traitorous hands still remembered the warmth of it, the stickiness between her fingers.
It had been years. Years since that day. Since the lifeless body lying beside her. Since the accusations. Since the blank spaces in her memory like burned-out pages in a book.
But the question still throbbed, louder now than ever.
What did I do?
Her fingers dug into the seat cushion as she squeezed her eyes shut.
"You okay back there, kid?" The voice floated over from the driver's seat. A balm to her frayed nerves.
He was Mr. Lennox. He had been her everything for as long as she could remember. The first face she had seen after Marlene's death. The man who had taken her trembling blood slicked hand, and said, You're not a monster. You're a child and children need love, not exile.
No one else had said anything like that. No one else had stayed.
Aeris exhaled shakily, dragging her fingers through her hair. Her pulse still skittered like a frightened animal beneath her skin.
"I'm fine," A lie. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Yeah. Just a dream."
Mr. Lennox said nothing for a moment. He reached forward and clicked the windshield wipers up a notch. "Same one?" he asked.
Aeris stiffened. "Yeah," she whispered, her throat tightening. "Still her."
And the blood. Always the blood.
Mr. Lennox didn't push further. He never did. Just gave a slight nod that she caught in the rearview mirror.
The car rumbled forward, tires crunching against a gravel road swallowed by forest, hemmed in by trees, their branches dripping with rain.
Aeris squinted through the windshield. "Where are we?"
"Almost there." Mr Lennox replied.
"You're really not coming with me?" she asked, trying to sound indifferent.
Silence answered first, long enough to sting.
Mr. Lennox shook his head. "They don't allow humans inside the gates. I've done all I can for you, Aeris. But this... this is where I should stop unfortunately."
The word unfortunately hit harder than she expected.
Her throat constricted. Aeris turned her face away, staring back at the dripping trees as if they could hold her together. "You were the only one who stayed," she whispered. "You worked at every school I went to," she continued, the ache in her voice finally breaking through. "You found a way every time."
Even when the world called her cursed, even when the walls of every school closed in on her and Aeris was thrown out again, and again, and again. Mr Lennox had been her constant.
Mr. Lennox's shoulders lifted with a breath too full of grief to be calm. "Because I couldn't leave you. Not after the orphanage."
Aeris bit the inside of her cheek, grounding herself in the sting.
"I knew then," he continued, softer now, each syllable pulled from someplace deep, "that if I didn't step in… they would've eaten you alive. You were a child with fire in your eyes and blood on your hands, and the world saw you as a curse."
He paused, his reflection in the mirror carved from guilt and something like love. "So I took a job at the next school. Then the next. I followed you because someone had to."
Aeris looked down at her hands. They were steady now. But she remembered the years they weren't—when they trembled so violently, she couldn't hold a pencil without it snapping in her grasp.
"You were the only one who didn't run," she murmured.
And now…
"Now you're sending me away," Aeris said, and the words came almost childlike.
"I'm not sending you away." Mr Lennox looked at her, through the mirror. His eyes tired, wet at the corners. "I'm letting you go because this world isn't kind to girls like you and I'm tired of watching it try to break you."
Aeris blinked hard, but it was useless. A single tear escaped, trailing hot down her cheek. Her throat ached from holding back the rest. "You think this place will be any kinder?"
"No," Mr. Lennox replied. "But I think it'll be truthful."
Aeris blinked, startled by the conviction in his tone.
"Noxmere may be cruel," he went on, gaze fixed on the road ahead, "but it won't lie to you about what you are. The world out here pretends. It tells you to smile, to shrink, to fit into something small and palatable. But maybe in there…" His voice faltered for half a second. "Maybe you'll finally get answers. Maybe you'll stop feeling like you have to hide your own skin."
A gust of wind slammed into the side of the car.
Then, the gates appeared.
They rose out of the mist like something out of a nightmare—tall, black and merciless. Twisted iron spires coiled like thorns, reaching high enough to scratch at the grey belly of the clouds.
Mr. Lennox stopped the car in the arched entryway. He reached into the inner pocket of his coat. When he turned back to her, there was something cradled in his hands, wrapped in deep burgundy velvet.
"I want you to have this," he said, holding it out like an offering. "I've kept it all these years."
Aeris took it, unwrapping it with trembling fingers.
A locket.
Silver, though dulled with age, the engraving in the locket—a crescent moon over a branch of thorns was still visible.
"You were holding it the night they brought you to the orphanage. Clutched in your tiny hand like it was the only thing you had left." Mr. Lennox said gently.
"I don't know where it came from, maybe your mother." He hesitated, swallowing hard. "But it's part of your story, and it deserves to go with you."
Aeris stared down at the locket, "Thank you," she whispered, tears blurring her vision.
Mr. Lennox leaned over the seat, brushing a wet strand of hair from her cheek. "You don't owe this world an apology for what you are, Aeris."
Aeris clutched the locket to her chest. The metal burned cold against her skin, as if it remembered more than she did.
The wind howled again, louder this time, and the gates groaned.
Welcome to Noxmere.