By now, pretending feels like muscle memory.
I show up to class. I take notes. I continue with my training lessons with the Shifters. But underneath it all, the air has changed. It's heavier. Aware.
Someone's watching us.
I first noticed it two days ago — a flicker in the reflection of a vending machine. A figure just outside the edge of sight. But when I turned, there was nothing. Now it's constant. A presence pressing against my skin like static.
Chaviv brushes it off at first. Or tries to.
"Paranoia's not a good look, Anita," he says over lunch, pushing a tray of fries between us. "You've been staring at that corner for five minutes."
I lower my voice. "Someone was there. Again."
He sighs — that too-casual kind of sigh that's actually a warning. "You're seeing things. You see things. There's a difference."
I take a fry and toss it to him.
But later, I catch him glancing over his shoulder.
And again the next day, when we're walking across the quad, a flicker of red light dances across the glass of the admin building — faint, like a reflection, except it follows him. His eyes narrow just slightly before he masks it with a smile and says, "Want to grab coffee?"
We ended up at the diner again, trying to blend in. Students chatter around us, and the smell of espresso fills the air. Everything looks normal, but it's not. I can feel eyes on us — cold, deliberate, trained.
"They're here," I whisper.
Chaviv's gaze sharpens instantly. He doesn't move, doesn't speak. Just shifts his cup slightly so that from the outside, it looks like a lazy conversation.
"How many?" he asks, voice barely audible.
By now I had a sense of how to use my fae seer abilities, ever since that night, my Seer felt as natural as breathing. I was still getting used to the feeling.
"Two. No — three. By the bar table."
He glances up just once, his expression easy, even lazy, but I feel the temperature dip. He's holding it in — the power that hums just beneath his skin.
"Don't look at them," he murmurs. "They'll know you see them."
There was no need, my senses was already on alert.
I grip my coffee cup tighter. "What do we do? What if they're the Magical bureau and they found us?"
He casually reached over, subtly grazing my knuckles.
"We act like we don't know." He pauses. "And if that doesn't work…"
"Then what?"
"Then they find out what a demon does when someone hunts him."
He smiles as he says it — small, charming, utterly human. But his eyes are a furnace.
For the next hour, we sit in perfect imitation of normalcy. Talking about classes. Sharing fries. Laughing at nothing.
The watchers don't move, but the feeling doesn't fade. It lingers, patient and precise.
And for the first time since the underground library, I realize something chilling — whoever they are, they know what we are.
And they're not afraid.
We head back to campus, neither of us talking while trying to keep a normal facade of just two campus students casually walking.
"Let's head to my dorm." Keeping a casual demeanor. He smirks.
My mind stutters for a moment as an images flashes by and my cheeks immediately burn.
Noticing my reaction, his smirk grew into that crooked side ways grin —one that tugs at my heart strings every time.
"Shut up,"
"I didn't say anything," he says raising his hands up in defense; glint of humor in his eyes.
"—but if I were to say something it would probably be along the lines of impure—"
I gave him a swift kick to his ass and stomping off faster, my cheeks now flaring —calling him every cuss word under the sun. Chaviv enjoying himself called after me as we continued towards the campus.
Chaviv opens his dorm room and shuts it behind us, tossing his bag onto the bed. "Welcome to the nerve center of illegal knowledge," he says, throwing himself onto his chair and pulling out the books he took from the underground library —hidden in his desk drawer.
I glanced at the books, they almost felt alive, as if they sensed us. He gestures for me to sit across from him on the bed.
I toss my own backpack next to his and get myself situated on his bed, he hands me a book before going through his own. I brush my thumb across the leather cover, a faint warmth under my fingers. Indented on the cover, an ancient sigil that seems to shift under the laplight.
"You know," I murmur slowly tracing the sigil, "we're one campus-wide panic away from being expelled."
"Please," he says without looking up, "if anyone knew what these really are, expulsion would be the kind option."
The way he says it makes my skin prickle.
I looked back to the book in my hands and open it. The pages whisper —literally, almost like a faint sigh.
"Chaviv..." I murmur, "These books...they feel...alive."
He shrugs, pretending to be casual, but I catch the way his fingers twitch. "Most of them are. The library wasn't a library at all. It was a cage. A place to keep knowledge alive… and dangerous."
I narrow my eyes, "You seem to know a lot about that library." I point out, his fingers twitched again. "You never did tell me how you knew about the library."
He doesn't answer. He just flips to the next page, I decide to not push any further.
I look back at the open book in my lap — a bestiary written in a language that seems to shift as I read. The drawings are beautiful and wrong all at once: horned figures kneeling before a throne of fire, eyes weeping light, a crown suspended over nothing. Each page hums faintly when I touch it.
Chaviv kneels beside me, flipping through one of the thicker volumes. The lamp on his desk flickers, caught between light and shadow.
"Half of these are written in languages I can't even name," he mutters, brushing his thumb over the text.
"You mean you can'tyet name," I say, trying for levity. "Give it five minutes and a caffeine overdose."
He smirks, but it doesn't reach his eyes. There's tension on his face, the kind that quietly vibrates— barely restrained, quietly dangerous.
I focus on my own book. Symbols I half-recognize burn faintly along the margins, whispering against my skin when I touch them.
By the time I'm on the second book, Chaviv and I are both sitting on the floor —facing each other. Chaviv leaning against the bed, cross-legged, hair falling into his eyes as he flips through another cracked spine. The lamp casting golden light — enough to see but not enough for anyone outside to guess what we're doing.
"This one keeps mentioning the Ninth Flame," I say quietly. "And a king who fell from the heavens."
He stills. Just enough for me to notice.
"Sounds dramatic," he says after a beat, too lightly.
"You flinched when I mentioned it."
He looks up then, and for the first time tonight his guard slips. "Because I've heard that name before. In my head. Since I was a kid."
The air goes still. The hum from the books deepens, vibrating through the floor.
"Maybe it's just coincidence," I offer, but even I don't believe it.
He shakes his head slowly. "Coincidence doesn't burn sigils into your skin."
He pushes up on of his bracelets and holds out his wrist. The mark there — faint and red, like a healing burn — matches the sigil on the pages. I reach out before I can stop myself, my fingers hovering just above it. The mark pulses once under my fingers, and the light in the room flickers.
"It reacts to you," I whisper.
"Maybe it's warning me."
"Or recognizing you."
Silence. Only the deep humming from the books and the steady thud of my heartbeat.
He leans back, staring at the ceiling. "If the Ninth Flame is what I think it is, then I'm not supposed to exist. The old texts said the king was destroyed — his power sealed."
"Then why are the books reacting to you?"
He doesn't answer. Just flips another page until we find a sketch — a human face half-shadowed by black flame. It looks like him. Almost perfectly.
Something twists in my chest — fear, maybe. Or pity. Or something too tangled to name.
"Chaviv…" I whisper. "What if you're not supposed to be here?"
He meets my gaze, the lamplight catching the faint golden glint in his eyes. "Then I guess we find out what happens to kings who come back."
The lamp flickers again, once, twice — then steadies. The air smells faintly of smoke.
Outside, the campus is quiet.
Inside, the truth is waking up.
The air changes before the sound does.
The moment Chaviv brushes the edge of the old book, the room exhales — a soundless rush of power that makes every shadow bend towards him, as if reaching out.
"Did you feel that?" I whisper.
He frowns, hand still hovering over the page. "Yeah. Like static."
But this isn't static. It's recognition.
The book shudders once, then again, before its pages flip in a frenzy, faster than wind could carry them. The motion stops abruptly, and glowing letters begin to bleed through the parchment, surfacing like ink forced out of another world.
"He Who Burned the Sky — The King Beneath Fire — The Name Lost to the Ninth Flame."
The glow deepens to crimson, casting the whole room in red light.
"What the hell?" Chaviv breathes. "I didn't— I didn't do anything."
He tries to pull his hand away, but the book's aura clings to him. The sigil on his wrist — the one hidden by his large jewelry crusted golden bracelets— ignites with the same color.
I can feel it. His pulse isn't beating in rhythm with his heart anymore; it's pulsing with the book.
And my Seer's sight flares open before I can stop it.
Everything goes white.
The dorm fades away, replaced by flickers — visions flashing faster than light:
— a throne made of obsidian and flame.
— a voice echoing from ages past, chanting a name I can't fully hear.
— a figure, crowned, kneeling in fire, screaming as light binds him in chains.
I clutch my temples. The visions are too much. The air crackles around me, and I realize I'm glowing — faint lines of light running beneath my skin.
"Anita?" Chaviv's voice cuts through, rough and scared. "Hey, what's happening to you?"
"It's not me— it's you," I manage to gasp. "The books… they know you, Chaviv. They're calling to you."
He shakes his head hard, panic flickering in his eyes. "That's impossible. I'm not—"
The book's light explodes outward, interrupting him. His protest is drowned in the sound of whispering — thousands of voices, layered atop each other, chanting something low and ancient.
"Stop it!" he shouts, slamming the cover shut — but the voices don't stop. They fade into one single phrase that chills me to the bone:
"The King still lives beneath his skin."
The light dies instantly. The books fall still. The air is heavy and silent again.
We sit there, both breathing hard, the scent of smoke hanging faintly in the room. His mark still glows, a small ember that refuses to go out.
I reach out, my hand trembling. "You saw it too, didn't you?"
He looks up at me, eyes darker than they've ever been — gold shimmering faintly in the brown. "I saw… something. But it doesn't make sense. I'm not— I can't be—"
"You are," I whisper. "And the books just recognized you before you did."
He swallows hard, gaze flicking to the closed book. "Then what am I, Anita?"
The mark on his wrist pulses once, like it's answering for him.
And somewhere in my mind — deep, low, ancient — a voice I don't recognize whispers:
The King remembers.
I gasp, the room tilting, my vision sparking again. My Seer's sight is pulling me deeper, and I know — I know — that whatever truth waits inside him is about to wake.
The world tilts.
I don't fall so much as unravel — the dorm room, the lamplight, even the air itself breaks apart into threads of light and shadow. I can still feel the floor beneath me, the rough texture of Chaviv's rug, but it's fading fast, like sound underwater.
Chaviv's voice reaches me through the distortion.
"Anita!—hey, stay with me—look at me!"
But his words are distant, stretched thin across time.
Then I see it.
Flame.
Endless, beautiful, terrible flame.
I'm standing in a world that looks nothing like ours — the sky a canvas of burning gold and smoke, the ground cracked with rivers of molten light. Before me, armies move like shadows across the horizon, bowing toward a single figure standing at the center of it all.
He wears a crown made of fire.
Chaviv.
Not the guy I just met but something vast. Power radiates from him in waves, bending reality, making the air shudder. His eyes burn brighter than the sun, and when he looks up, the whole world seems to hold its breath.
He raises a hand — and the battlefield stills.
His voice rolls through the air, deep and commanding, every syllable echoing like thunder.
"Let the Ninth Flame bear witness. No light, no god, no mortal shall unmake me."
I can't breathe.
I feel the power in his words, like heat on my skin. This isn't a vision — it's a memory. His memory.
Something tugs at me from behind — a soft, familiar energy, cool and bright as starlight. I turn.
She's there.
A woman wrapped in white fire, her eyes glowing pure white. My own face… but older, steadier. The Seer who came before me.
She's staring at him with something that hurts to recognize — love and dread, tangled together.
"You weren't meant to rule forever," she says softly.
"You weren't meant to see forever," he answers. His voice is almost gentle now. "But here we are."
They reach for each other — fire and light — and when their hands meet, the world explodes.
The flames twist into chains, the light into seals. I hear ancient words spoken — words of binding. The Demon King is imprisoned, his true name scattered across time, and the Seer… she falls into darkness, her power fracturing into the souls of those yet to come.
Into me.
The vision cracks like glass.
"Anita!"
Chaviv's voice echoes again, close now. Hands on my shoulders. Heat and worry.
I gasp and jolt back into the dorm room. My lungs burn, my heart races. The smell of smoke lingers, faint but real.
Chaviv's face hovers inches from mine, his eyes wide with fear. His mark is glowing like an open wound, and there's a smear of ash on his cheek — real ash.
"What did you see?" he demands.
My voice shakes. "You. All of it. You were a king — the Demon King. And I… I was the Seer who bound you."
He stares at me, disbelief and confusion flickering behind his expression, but he doesn't move. Doesn't speak.
The silence feels older than the world.