The nights grow longer, or maybe Xena simply sleeps less.
Her room smells of old paper and burnt sage.
Candles crowd her desk, their flames bending in quiet rhythm as she traces lines in a leather-bound grimoire.
Symbols from centuries past,Gaelic, Yoruba, Latin, tongues older than light, spiral across the pages. She's learning to weave them together, to summon not just power but purpose.
On the wall, a map of the world gleams with pins and string.
Celtic blood rites from Ireland.
Fire sigils from the witch covens of Haiti.
Dream incantations whispered in the forests of Japan.
She studies them all.
Each spell she copies leaves a faint shimmer on her fingertips. And a tinny hollow where consciousness meets power.
The power hums low, waiting.
"The more you open yourself to it," Grandma Gen had said once, "the more it opens you in return."
Sometimes, when she closes her eyes, Xena can almost hear the ancestors speaking, women who burned, bled, or vanished for what she now holds in her hands.
She's stronger now. She can feel it in her veins, through the way her blood flowed, in the way the air bends when she whispers a word.
And yet, it wasn't enough.
Not while her mother grows weaker every day.
Not while she watched the madness turn into pools of coughed up blood.
Not while-
Gen finds her that morning, asleep over an open spellbook.
"Child," the old woman murmurs, brushing ash from her cheek, as Xenia cleared of the drool from her lips. "You can't heal the world in one night.You should give yourself a break"
Xena blinks awake. "Maybe not. But I can heal her. Or at least try to."
Gen's eyes soften, the lines of age and worry deepening.
"Selene's sickness isn't what doctors think," she says. "What grows in her… isn't just flesh rebelling. It's memory. Magic left to rot." She told Xena as she took her face in her hands,looking at her softly.
Xena stiffens. "You mean-"
"I mean it was passed down. A curse from your mother's mother's mother. It hides beneath the name of cancer because mortals cannot name what they fear."
Gen opens a small chest and takes out a vial of dark blue powder that shimmered. "This once bound the curse. But your mother turned away from the craft. Now, it wakes."
Xena stares at the powder, at the shimmer of beneath it. "Then teach me. I'll finish what she couldn't. I'm stronger now"
Gen's lips press into a thin line. "Be careful what you finish, child. Some spells heal the body but poison the soul."
Their eyes meet, one filled with youthful fury, the other with knowledge of knowing .
And for the first time, Xena sees Gen not just as her grandmother, but as the witch she once was, the guardian of secrets too old to behold.
Dream of the Faceless Man
Xavier dreams of Theo again.
They're in the bleachers at dusk, the field soaked in gold light.
Theo laughs, until his face begins to fade. The laughter turns hollow, echoing like wind through a tunnel. Then, from behind the blur, he appears.
The faceless man.
Tall.
Still.
His outline shifting like smoke.
Where his face should be, there's only a pale void that hums with heat and longing.
Xavier can't move. He feels drawn forward, pulled by something deeper than fear.
"You're not supposed to be here," he whispers.
A low voice answers, not through words, but through thought, pressing against his skull like a heartbeat.
"And yet… here you dream of me."
The man raises a hand. From his palm spills black sand that swirls into the shape of wings, beautiful, luring but yet, terrifying .
Theo's voice breaks through, faint, pleading.
"Wake up, Xav."
But he can't. The faceless man steps closer until the air between them cracks with static.
"You will follow when the door opens," thevoice says. "And you will call me by my name."
"What name?" Xavier gasps. "Who are you?"
The man leans close, so close Xavier feels his breath, though there's no mouth to give it, and whispers a sound that doesn't belong in this world.
Then the dream collapses.
Xavier wakes screaming.
But the name of the faceless, he couldn't remember.
By spring, Selene's strength fades again.
She hides it well-smiling at the twins, cooking breakfast, saying she's "just tired." But Xena sees the tremor in her hands. Xavier hears her coughing at night.
The doctors call it a relapse.
Gen calls it reckoning.
In the hospital room, light glows cold against Selene's skin. She sleeps, IV lines tangled like silver threads. Xena sits beside her, murmuring spells under her breath, palms glowing faintly with warmth. But the magic slides off, unanchored.
"Why isn't it working?" she whispers.
Gen's hand rests on her shoulder. "Because this isn't a sickness you can banish with light. It's the shadow of every spell she denied."
Tears well in Xena's eyes. "Then I'll face it for her."
Gen nods, slow and sorrowful. "You will. But power comes with a price, child, and sometimes, that price is time."
Across the room, Xavier watches them both, silent. He's been dreaming again, of the faceless man waiting in the dark, whispering that all this suffering could end if he just opened the door and let him in.
Outside, the night deepens, and for the first time in a long while, the moon doesn't rise.
As the twins' journey continues.