Kaelith found herself in a part of the city she didn't recognize.
That was a lie.
She recognized it. Somewhere deep beneath her skin, she felt it like a bruise being pressed. She stood in front of a crumbling apartment building two subway lines away from the last trace of Dahlia Venn.
She hadn't told anyone where she was going.
Not her colleagues. Not her superiors.
And definitely not the part of her brain that still pretended this was about psychiatry.
This was about truth.
Her hand hovered over the intercom.
Then moved past it.
The door was already cracked open.
Not just unlocked.
Waiting.
She pushed it open and stepped into the dim stairwell. It smelled like rust and mildew. The lights flickered.
Third floor.
Unit 3B.
That's where Dahlia's last location pinged. Not an official address—just a scraped GPS signature hidden beneath layers of wiped data.
Kaelith climbed the stairs slowly.
Each step felt heavier.
Each breath more difficult.
She reached the door.
And froze.
Something was carved into the wood.
A circle with a slit through the center.
The same one from her dreams.
The same one she'd drawn in her sleep.
Kaelith knocked once.
Silence.
She knocked again.
Still nothing.
She tried the knob.
Unlocked.
The door creaked inward.
The apartment smelled like dust and old pages. Every window had been covered with blackout cloth. Sunlight barely filtered through.
It was empty.
But not abandoned.
Books were stacked in towers. Notebooks covered every surface. Walls pinned with photos. Maps. Strings. Symbols.
Kaelith moved deeper, careful not to disturb anything.
On the kitchen counter sat a teacup. Still warm.
Someone had been here recently.
She turned to the wall above the desk.
Her own face stared back at her.
Photographs from her medical school. Her employment records. Newspaper clippings of Saevus's cult.
Drawings of Ashema—not photos, but artistic renderings.
A girl in white. Fire around her. Eyes too wide.
At the center of the board:
YOU AREN'T WHO THEY TOLD YOU TO BE.
Kaelith's chest tightened.
A sound creaked behind her.
She turned.
No one.
But her phone vibrated in her pocket.
Blocked number.
One message:
"You shouldn't be here. They're watching."
A second followed.
"Leave the relic. Take the red envelope under the bed."
Kaelith moved before questioning it.
The mattress was already lifted slightly at the edge.
She reached under.
Fingers closed around a thick envelope.
Inside: coordinates. A location upstate. GPS directions. And a phrase scribbled in red ink:
"The first place they made you forget."
Kaelith stared at it.
Then back at the wall.
The image of her younger self burned behind her eyes.
White dress. Open flames.
Ashema.
The name pulsed behind her ribs—not in thought, but in ache. Like it was trying to burn its way back into the world.
Her hands were shaking.
She didn't realize how badly until she reached for the counter to steady herself and saw her fingers—smudged with something dark. Not blood. Not ink.
Ash?
She blinked. Rubbed them together.
Gone.
She stumbled into the bathroom, needing a mirror—not for vanity, but proof. That she still looked like herself. That her reflection still remembered her name.
She flipped on the light.
Harsh. Flickering. Fluorescent.
Her face stared back at her from the cracked mirror above the sink.
Gaunt. Pale.
But hers.
Almost.
Her left hand rose—unbidden.
It moved slowly, trembling, up toward the glass.
And her reflection didn't follow.
The other Kaelith—the one behind the mirror—was ahead of her by a second, tracing something on the other side.
A circle.
A slit.
Her breath caught.
The mirrored hand finished drawing the slit-sun symbol in fog across the glass—slow, deliberate—then pressed its palm flat over it.
Kaelith's real hand hovered midair.
Frozen.
Her reflection blinked—and for the briefest second, the eyes staring back were not hers.
Wider. Older. Burning.
She backed away. Fast. Hit the sink.
The mirror returned to normal.
Her hand lifted.
The symbol was gone.
She slipped the envelope into her coat and turned to leave.
But just as she reached the doorway, her phone buzzed one last time.
A photo.
Grainy.
Surveillance style.
A picture of her standing in the stairwell.
Taken thirty seconds ago.