Chapter VII: The Arithmetic Sequence
The days turned into weeks, and the veil between two worlds—engineering school and the Manor—grew thinner with every passing lecture.
For most students at King's College, midterm season was hell enough: sleepless nights, endless problem sets, group projects that felt like wars fought with whiteboards and spreadsheets. But for Nathaniel Cross, each chalk mark on the board carried the shadow of blood.
It wasn't just numbers anymore. It was survival.
Nathaniel sat in the library, hunched over a battered textbook of Differential Equations and Their Applications. The lamps cast long pools of golden light across oak tables, but beyond that, shadows pooled in corners like ink.
His notes sprawled before him, page after page of half-finished solutions:
y′′+4y′+4y=e−2xy'' + 4y' + 4y = e^{-2x}y′′+4y′+4y=e−2x
He stared until the symbols warped into something else—runes, etched like the ones on the ceiling of the Manor when his scar had flared.
His pencil trembled. Focus. It's just math. Just math.
But in his head, he heard Alden's voice again: "You either solve the system... or it collapses."
And behind it, Eris's whisper: "You cannot run from what you are."
Nathaniel pressed harder, scrawling an integrating factor across the margin until the paper tore.
"Mate, you're going to stab the paper to death before you solve it."
Theo's voice cut through the tension. He plopped into the seat across from Nathaniel, hoodie pulled low, a half-eaten sandwich in hand.
Nathaniel exhaled shakily. "Just... lost track."
Theo eyed his notes. "Lost track? You've been stuck on the same problem for an hour. It's like watching a man duel a ghost."
Nathaniel almost laughed at the accuracy.
But then—the flicker again. Movement at the edge of vision. He glanced past Theo.
There she was. The dark-haired girl. A book open in her hands, untouched. Her eyes lingered on him just a moment too long. When he blinked, she looked away—but Nathaniel knew she'd been watching.
His scar throbbed.
Theo followed his gaze, chewing. "You fancy her or something?"
Nathaniel shook his head quickly. "No. It's... nothing."
"Right." Theo smirked. "'Cause 'staring into the abyss of someone's soul' is definitely nothing."
But Nathaniel wasn't listening anymore.
The group project in engineering economics was worse.
They'd been assigned teams at random, forced to work together on a cost-benefit analysis for a hypothetical railway expansion through the Midlands. For most students, the nightmare was logistics—coordinating schedules, dividing the mountain of spreadsheets.
For Nathaniel, the nightmare was the presence at the table.
The tall boy he'd seen before—lean, sharp cheekbones, pale enough to draw whispers—had ended up in his group. His name, he claimed, was Adrian Clarke. But his eyes... Nathaniel couldn't shake the way they lingered too long, as though peeling layers from his skin.
They sat in a small seminar room, laptops glowing. Theo complained about depreciation models, their other teammate scribbled cash-flow estimates, and Adrian... just watched.
Nathaniel pretended to focus on the numbers.
"Cross," Adrian said suddenly, voice low, too smooth. "You're unusually quiet. Struggling with the cost of capital?"
The words were ordinary. But something about the cadence twisted them into a knife.
Nathaniel forced a neutral tone. "Just thinking."
Adrian's lips curved—not a smile, not really. More like acknowledgment. Like a predator noting its prey still had strength to run.
Theo broke the silence, waving his hands. "Forget capital costs—these numbers don't even add up. If the net present value's negative, the railway collapses before it lays track!"
Nathaniel's scar seared at the word. Collapses.
He swallowed hard, scribbling corrections. But the feeling didn't leave. He could almost hear a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
Days blurred.
Nathaniel ran himself ragged: morning lectures, afternoon labs, evenings in the library, nights pounding through the rain-slick streets until his lungs screamed. Still, the shadows clung.
The reflection in the window returned sometimes, smiling when he did not. The girl appeared in lecture halls, always gone when he tried to follow. Adrian's questions grew sharper, probing not just at projects but at Nathaniel himself.
"You seem tired, Cross."
"Your scar—was it from an accident?"
"Do you believe in fate?"
Normal words. Yet each carried an echo, as though spoken from across the veil.
He didn't answer. He couldn't.
Instead, he clung to the numbers.
At night, he lined his walls with problem sets, equations covering every inch of paper. He recited formulas like prayers. He told himself that if he mastered them—if he conquered the relentless weight of numbers—he could conquer the shadows too.
NPV=∑t=0nCt(1+r)tNPV = \sum_{t=0}^{n} \frac{C_t}{(1+r)^t}NPV=t=0∑n(1+r)tCt and FC=PC(1+i) raised to n, where n is the period either compounded or just simple.
Each time he wrote it, he imagined striking a blade into the dark.
But the dark kept striking back.
It came to a head on a Thursday night.
The library had thinned to silence, only a few stragglers bent over books. Nathaniel sat alone, papers strewn across the table, his scar burning faintly.
He sensed movement behind him.
Slow. Deliberate.
He turned.
The girl stood there. Closer than ever before. Her eyes gleamed faintly in the lamplight—too bright, too sharp.
"Nathaniel Cross," she said softly. Not a question. A certainty.
His chest tightened. "Who are you?"
Her lips curved, almost kind, almost cruel. "Someone who watches. Someone who waits."
Before he could answer, before he could rise, a shadow passed across the window beside them. For a fraction of a second, crimson eyes glimmered in the glass.
Nathaniel's heart lurched.
When he turned back, the girl was gone.
The papers on the table fluttered, though the air was still.
And on the margin of his notebook, written in a hand not his own, were words that froze his blood:
The Gravenholts are patient. But not blind.
He staggered out of the library, breath ragged. The streets of London blurred around him, neon and rain mixing into streaks of color. Every shadow seemed alive. Every passerby's face seemed to flicker crimson.
He ran until his legs gave out, collapsing against the iron railing of Waterloo Bridge. The Thames churned dark below, endless, merciless.
His scar pulsed, hot as fire.
He gripped the rail, whispering through clenched teeth. "I won't break. Do you hear me? I won't."
The wind howled, carrying no answer. But Nathaniel knew.
They were already here.