Chapter 21 The Spring Break War
Tuesday, January 6→ Thursday, January 20, 2027**
The realization hits me somewhere between third-period trig and the moment I re-draw the same crooked-river-wolf symbol for the forty-seventh time.
There isn't thirty-seven lessons.
There's thousands.
Vinča script has over two thousand known signs (and Dacia keeps pulling up ones that were ground to dust before the first pyramid was built).
She lived through it.
She watched the first blood-mage carve the first symbol into wet clay with a copper stylus while the Danube was still wild.
Every night now I'm in mist-space until 4 a.m., copying tablets that don't exist anywhere else on Earth.
My healing erases the ink by morning, so I have to start over.
It's going to take years (maybe a decade) of nightly sessions before the symbols burn permanent into my soul.
I'm fifteen.
I'll be in my mid-twenties before I'm fluent.
That's okay.
I decided that on night three, when my hand cramped so bad I cried blood tears.
I'll be twenty-five or thirty or forty if that's what it takes.
Because every symbol I master is another shield between the people I love and the things that want to eat them.
I want Remy to get old and gray and annoy me about laundry.
I want Seras to burn down half the forest by accident and laugh about it at our wedding.
I want Noah and Brittany to have kids who never know what real monsters look like.
I want every normal, magic-less kid at Lakeside High to graduate without ever learning that ghosts and revenants are real.
If that costs me ten thousand nights of blood ink and no sleep, I'll pay it.
**Tuesday after school – Calder's Auto Shop**
Remy's already there in grease-stained coveralls, hair tied back, sleeves pushed up to show the new muscle he earned in Colorado.
He's elbow-deep in a '67 Mustang and grinning like it's Christmas.
**Remy (wiping his hands on a rag):**
"Uncle Calder's putting me on payroll.
Twenty hours a week.
Gonna save for a car.
Still keeping the dirt bike, obviously, but I want something I can take you to prom in without both of us eating dirt."
I lean against the workbench and just look at him (my coyote boy who smells like motor oil and pine and home).
**Celeste (soft):**
"Take your time.
We've got years."
He hears the weight behind it, steps close, cups my face with hands that still smell like gasoline.
**Remy:**
"However long the road is, Vale… I'm driving it with you."
I kiss him right there in the shop, tools clattering, radio playing old-school rock, future stretching out long and bright and worth every drop of blood I'll ever write.
**Thursday, January 20
**Abandoned skatepark bowl, 3:30 p.m.**
Seras, Remy, and I meet Holly, Malik, and Vera under the cracked concrete.
Holly is spinning a copper coin across her knuckles (old habit, nervous tic).
Malik has his trumpet case.
Vera hasn't taken off her leather jacket once, even when it snowed last week.
**Holly (straight to it):**
"Hollow Choir update.
They hit the Oregon heir last night.
Took her face, her voice, her fragment.
She was twelve pieces in.
Now they're wearing her like a skin suit and asking questions about Arkansas."
Vera finally speaks, voice raw.
**Vera:**
"They're coming for the biggest remaining fragment count.
That's you, Morau."
Malik adjusts his glasses.
**Malik (quiet):**
"We're not asking you to save the world.
We're asking if we can stand with you when they get here.
Because running isn't working anymore."
Seras cracks her knuckles; real fire dances between her fingers.
**Seras:**
"Valley's got rules.
You fight with us, you're pack."
Remy nods once, final.
I look at each of them (six teenagers against something that eats identities) and feel the first Vinča symbol burn behind my eyes, permanent at last.
**Celeste:**
"Then we stop running.
We train.
We protect this place and everyone in it.
However many years it takes."
Holly's coin stops spinning.
**Holly (small, fierce smile):**
"However many years."
We don't shake on it.
We just stand in a circle while the weak January sun sets behind us, six kids who know exactly how long the road is and have decided to walk it anyway.
Ten pieces down.
Thousands of symbols to go.
But the people I love are breathing tonight, and that's enough to keep writing in blood until my hands fall off.
Spring break starts in 2 months
The Hollow Choir is coming.
And the storm is just getting started.
Spring Break, March 18th-22, 2027**
**Friday, March 20 – 11:47 p.m.**
The valley goes dead silent.
Not quiet.
Dead.
No crickets. No hot-spring hiss. No wind in the cedars.
My phone buzzes with the emergency tone we set up after Romania.
Group chat:
**Seras:** they're here
**Remy:** north ridge. moving fast
**Holly:** wearing the Oregon heir's face. don't trust anyone who looks like a kid
I'm already out the window, board under my arm, twin tails whipping in the unnatural wind.
I meet the others at the dam turnout in under four minutes.
Remy, Seras, Holly, Malik, Vera.
All of us in black hoodies and magic gear like a teenage special-ops team.
We don't speak.
We just look north.
On the ridge, silhouettes stand in a perfect line: twelve figures that look exactly like children aged eight to seventeen.
The Hollow Choir, wearing the faces they stole.
The one in the Oregon heir's body (a girl with long brown braids and freckles) raises a hand and waves like we're old friends.
Her mouth opens.
Every stolen voice speaks at once, layered, wrong.
**Hollow Choir (chorus):**
"Celeste Valentina Morau.
Ten pieces.
We only need one more face tonight."
The bloodstone on my forehead burns cold.
**Crown HUD (crimson, screaming):**
```
THREAT LEVEL: OBSIDIAN
HOLLOW CHOIR – 12 ACTIVE VESSELS
Primary target: Celeste Morau
Secondary targets: All witnesses
```
Remy steps in front of me, dagger glowing hellebore-purple.
**Remy (growling):**
"Over my dead body."
The Choir smiles with twelve stolen mouths.
**Choir:**
"That can be arranged."
Then they move.
It's the worst fight of my life.
They don't bleed.
They don't tire.
Every time we shatter one, the skin sloughs off like wet paper and the thing inside keeps coming, faceless and hungry.
Holly takes a hit meant for Malik and goes down hard, copper curls soaked red.
Vera screams something in old Appalachian and unloads a shotgun full of blessed rock-salt that actually makes one of them stagger.
Seras is a walking inferno, green ghost-fire mixing with her normal red.
Remy fights like a wolf possessed, claws and dagger and pure refusal to let anything touch me.
I'm everywhere at once: Mirror Step through broken reflections, blood-lightning carving trenches in the fresh spring ground, Vinča symbols flaring across my skin for half a second before my healing erases them again.
We're losing.
Then the ghosts show up.
Al Capone and the boys step out of the steam like they were waiting for the cue.
Tommy guns made of moonlight and 1920s wrath.
**Al (cigar glowing):**
"Nobody touches the Morau kid in my town."
The tide turns.
Ghosts and teenagers and one very angry coyote against twelve identity-thieving horrors.
We drive them back to the ridge by 3:13 a.m.
The last vessel (still wearing the Oregon girl's face) smiles with broken teeth.
**Last Vessel:**
"This was only the greeting card.
The real Choir is coming.
All thirty-three remaining vessels.
On Spring Break."
Then it collapses into ash that the wind refuses to carry.
Silence returns.
Holly is unconscious but breathing.
Malik is crying over her.
Vera's hands won't stop shaking.
Remy pulls me against his chest, covered in blood that isn't his.
**Remy (voice raw):**
"Thirty-three."
**Celeste (whispering into his hoodie):**
"Then we have until tomorrow night to get ready."
Al tips his hat, already fading.
**Al:**
"See you kids at the Ohio Club tomorrow.
Bring your dancing shoes.
War's a hell of a party."
We limp home as the sky starts to lighten.
Ten pieces down.
Thousands of symbols to go.
Thirty-three monsters wearing stolen faces coming at sunset.
I look at my crew (my family) and feel the first Vinča symbol finally burn itself into my left palm
It looks like a crooked river delta crossed with a wolf's head.it dissolved again from my healing
The sign for **endurance**.
Perfect.
Tomorrow night the Hollow Choir learns what happens when you try to take faces from a valley that's already claimed by a storm queen and her ghosts.
The end of the war. is in twenty-four hours.For Better or worse.
We'll be ready.
Even if we have to burn the whole damn town down to do it. Al and the boys fade with a final salute.
Holly is unconscious, Malik crying, Vera shaking, Remy holding me like I'm the only solid thing left in the world.
I'm shaking too, adrenaline and terror and exhaustion all hitting at once.
I look down at my left palm, expecting the first Vinča symbol to finally be there.
Nothing.
Smooth skin.
The healing erased it again, like always.
Dacia's voice drifts through the bloodstone, soft and almost apologetic.
Dacia:
Not yet, child.
Flesh forgets.
Only the soul remembers forever.
Keep writing.
One day you will know the Old Tongue even if it keeps disappearing every time you heal.
Until then, endurance is a choice you make every morning.
I close my fist anyway.
No permanent mark.
That's fine.
I don't need a tattoo to remind me why I'm doing this.
I look at Remy's blood-streaked face, at Seras's trembling flames, at Holly breathing shallow in Malik's arms, at Vera reloading with hands that refuse to stop.
Thirty-three more vessels wearing stolen faces are coming tomorrow night.
I don't need permanent symbols on my skin.
I've got living ones standing right in front of me.
Celeste (quiet, fierce):
"Tomorrow we finish this."
Remy nods once.
Seras's fire flares bright enough to hurt.
Malik lifts Holly like she weighs nothing.
Vera racks another shell.
Ten pieces down.
Thousands of blood-written nights ahead.
And tomorrow, on the darkest night of the year, the valley fights back.
No permanent marks.
Just permanent people worth bleeding for.
We'll be ready.
The Hollow Choir Dawn, March 21, 2027**
The sky is turning that bruised purple that comes right before sunrise.
We're still on the north ridge, steam rising off our clothes, the smell of ozone and gun-smoke thick in the air.
I turn to Remy.
My voice comes out raw, cracked from screaming Vinča syllables and lightning.
**Celeste:**
"I have a bad feeling, Rem.
A really bad one."
I swallow, throat tasting like copper.
"Tonight we barely survived twelve.
Tomorrow there's thirty-three.
Even with Capone's boys… we might lose someone.
We might lose a lot of someones."
His amber eyes are glowing coyote-gold in the half-light.
There's blood on his cheek that isn't his.
**Celeste (quieter, but harder):**
"Call the whole pack.
Every coyote who can walk, crawl, or shift.
Tomorrow night we go full war-form if we have to.
No holding back.
No pretty fights.
No survivors on their side."
Remy doesn't flinch.
He just pulls out his phone with shaking fingers and hits the pack-wide emergency tone (three long howls in digital form).
Thirty seconds later the first replies flood in:
**Calder:** on my way
**Julian:** bringing every rune I own
**Lena (Remy's little cousin, 13):** I can fight
**Calder again:** no. everyone 14 and up. full shift authorized.
Remy looks up from the screen.
**Remy (voice steady, deadly):**
"Whole pack's coming.
Fifty-three shifters, plus whatever ghosts Al can round up.
Tomorrow night the ridge is ours."
I nod, throat tight.
**Celeste:**
"If we don't give everything… someone I love doesn't come home."
He steps close, cups my face with hands that are still half-clawed.
**Remy:**
"Then we give everything.
And we all come home."
I lean my forehead against his.
**Celeste (whisper):**
"Promise me."
**Remy (fierce):**
"On every scar I've got."
Behind us, Seras's flames settle into a low, steady burn (battle-ready, not panicked).
Holly coughs, still in Malik's arms, and gives a weak thumbs-up.
Vera loads another shell and doesn't blink.
The sun finally breaks over the mountains, painting the valley gold.
Thirty-three stolen faces are coming at sunset.
We'll be waiting.
Every coyote in the county.
Every ghost in the tunnels.
Every drop of blood I have left to write.
Tomorrow night we don't just fight.
We end this.
Or we die making sure the people we love don't.