The moment Amara's fingers closed around the stone, the room disappeared.
The table, the flickering lamp, her mother's sharp intake of breath, her grandmother's steady, watching gaze gone.
There was only light.
Not blinding white light.
A strange, shifting glow, like moonlight passing through water. It wrapped around her, thick and heavy, and for one terrifying moment she felt like she was drowning in the sky.
She tried to pull her hand back.
She couldn't.
The necklace pulsed beneath her fingers.
Once.
Twice.
On the third pulse, something inside her answered.
A soft click like a lock opening after years of rust.
Then everything rushed in.
It hit her in fragments.
Not words.
Not images at first.
Feelings.
Heat. Cold. Falling. Rising. Pain. Joy. Betrayal. Love so intense it felt like a wound.
She heard voices, but they weren't in any language she knew. Still, she understood them the way you understand a song you've never heard before but somehow remember.
A woman's laughter under a broken sky.
A man's voice saying her name like a promise.
Serena.
Darian.
The names weren't spoken. They were just there, hovering at the edges of everything.
Amara saw flashes.
A palace built on starlight and stone.
A temple in ruins, two figures standing too close.
A battlefield on fire.
A sword cutting through moonlit air.
Her chest burning as if the blade had gone through her instead.
She saw the moment Serena screamed the curse into the world.
Felt the tearing of it.
The way the mist recoiled. The way vampires burned. The way something in the fabric of reality twisted around a single woman's grief and made it permanent.
Amara's breath hitched.
She felt Serena's heartbreak like it was her own.
The love.
The betrayal.
The horrible, sickening realization of being used.
It was too much.
"Stop," Amara gasped—but her lips didn't move.
She wasn't speaking here.
She was remembering.
Not just as herself.
As someone else.
A girl in another lifetime who had stood on cracked stone and decided to break an entire species.
A girl who had paid for that decision with everything she was.
Serena.
You did this, Amara thought.
Serena's answer came like a whisper in the back of her mind.
And you will finish it.
The light changed.
It focused, sharpening from a blur into a single image.
Amara stood—not in her grandmother's sitting room, but in a courtyard she recognized from stories now made real. Cracked stone. Burnt pillars. The faint scent of ash.
And at the far end—
A man on his knees.
Armor scorched. Hair darkened by soot. Eyes no longer silver, but dimmer, tired.
Darian.
He lifted his head.
But when his gaze met hers, something was wrong.
He didn't look at her with surprise.
He looked at her with recognition.
"As expected," he said quietly. "You look like her."
Amara froze.
He wasn't talking to Serena.
He was talking to Amara.
"But you're—" she stammered. "You're a memory. This is the past. This isn't real."
He smiled, tired and sad.
"Memories are never just the past," he said. "Not when they're bound in blood and curse."
The courtyard wavered around them, like heat over asphalt.
Amara looked down at herself.
She wasn't wearing her jeans and crop top anymore. A long dress flowed around her ankles, the fabric shimmering with wards she didn't understand but instinctively knew how to read. Her hair was different too—longer, braided back with tiny strands of light woven in.
Serena's body.
Her mind.
A horrible mix of both.
"Am I dreaming?" she whispered.
"Yes," Darian said. "And no."
"That is not helpful," she snapped automatically.
He huffed a laugh.
"Serena said that, too," he murmured. "You two really are the same storm, just in different skies."
A pang went through her chest at the name.
"I'm not her," Amara said quickly. "I'm not Serena. I'm just—"
"The heir," Darian finished. "The chosen one. The one your people have been hiding, and my people have been hunting, since the day Serena screamed her curse into the mist."
Anger flared in her.
"So you're proud of that?" she demanded. "That your people have been stalking mine for centuries like animals? Waiting to use me like you used her?"
His smile vanished.
"No," he said sharply. "I am not proud. I am… tired. Of watching the same story replay with new faces."
He stood carefully, as if every movement hurt.
Amara realized suddenly that what she was seeing wasn't exactly that night—the night of the war—but something tied to it later. A vision anchored to the past, but reaching forward.
"When Serena made her choice," Darian said quietly, "she thought she was ending something. She was wrong. She just caged it. And cages rust. Locks weaken. New hands find the old keys."
He stepped closer.
Amara wanted to move back.
She couldn't.
The vision held her in place.
"You're not really here," she said. "You're a recording. Like a magical voicemail from hell."
His lips twitched again.
"You could call it that," he said. "Serena's magic made this echo. Mine anchored it. Between us, we left… a message. For you."
Her throat tightened.
"Why me?" she asked. "Why not just let the whole thing die with you?"
"Because curses don't die," he said. "Not ones like this. They adapt. They twist. They find loopholes. If no one guides their evolution, they become worse."
He paused, eyes searching her face.
"You've already felt it, haven't you?" he asked. "The pull. The… wrongness in the world. Like something is out of place, just slightly, all the time."
Amara thought of the way she'd always felt off. The way touching Lucian had short-circuited her senses.
She said nothing.
"That's the curse, too," Darian said softly. "Not just in our flesh. In the world. Light and shadow constantly pushing, never settling. Your line feels it more than most."
"Then fix it," she snapped. "You're the ones who started this."
He flinched at that.
"Serena started it," he said. "I broke my oaths. We both played our parts. And we left you with the bill, didn't we?"
His voice softened.
"I'm sorry."
She wasn't prepared for that.
"You're sorry," she repeated flatly. "You helped massacre her people. You betrayed her trust. You watched her scream a curse that tore reality, and your descendants have spent centuries hunting mine—"
"Yes," he said. "And if I could unmake what I did, I would. But time is not a road we can walk backward. It is… a circle that keeps dragging us through the same turns until someone breaks the cycle properly."
He stopped a few paces away from her.
"Serena broke it with rage," he said. "You must break it with something else."
"Like what?" she asked. "Love? Forgiveness? Is this the part where you start preaching 'Power of Love' TEDx Talk?"
He actually smiled at that.
"You sound more like you than her," he said. "That's good. Serena loved me so deeply it ruined her. You…" His eyes darkened. "You still have a chance not to let any vampire hold that kind of power over you."
Lucian's face flashed in her mind.
She shoved it away.
"Why show me any of this?" she asked. "What do you want from me?"
"To warn you," he said simply. "The Lucian line has always been too arrogant. Too sure our blood gives us the right to shape the world. We will come for you—some gently, some brutally. Some with smiles. Some with knives. Some with both."
Images flickered behind him.
A library.
A dark room with a single chair and a bright light.
A university hallway.
Lucian standing there, hands in his pockets, eyes on her like she was the only thing in the room.
"They will not all agree on how to use you," Darian continued. "Some will want you dead, believing that if the last heir dies, the curse will crack on its own. Some will want your blood. Some will want your power. Some will say they want your heart."
He looked at her steadily.
"Trust none of them."
The words sank into her like stones.
"I already met one," she blurted, before she could stop herself. "At school. He didn't try to drink my blood on sight."
Darian's mouth quirked.
"And was he beautiful?" he asked wryly.
Heat crept up her neck.
"This is irrelevant," she said.
"That's a yes," he murmured. "Our line always did breed dangerously pretty monsters."
"He didn't feel… evil," she said quietly.
"Neither did I to Serena," Darian replied. "At first."
That shut her up.
He took a slow breath.
"This echo will end soon," he said. "When you wake, you'll have more than pretty lights in your head. Serena's line was never meant to be just passive seers or gentle healers. You are anchors. Bridge points. The place where magic and curse and history knot themselves together."
He lifted his hand.
For a second, Amara saw it as armor-clad.
Then as bare.
Then as bone.
Three versions overlapped.
"This necklace," he said, gesturing to the stone in her hand, "is Serena's last anchor. Through it, her power will flow into you. Carefully, if you're wise. Violently, if you're stubborn."
"Bad news for everyone then," she muttered. "I'm very stubborn."
"I can tell," he said dryly.
He stepped closer.
This time, she felt no fear.
Only a strange, heavy sadness.
"If you want to live," he said quietly, "you must learn faster than Serena did. Ask harder questions. Trust slower. Remember that their hunger is not just for blood. It is for freedom. For day."
"And if I refuse to help at all?" she challenged. "If I decide the curse stays exactly as it is, and they can continue to fry like suya in the sun?"
Darian's eyes glinted.
"Then the world will still change," he said. "Because something is already shifting. Your birth tilted the balance. The seal your grandmother placed only delayed it. Now that it's breaking…"
He gestured at the cracking sky above them.
Amara looked up.
Hairline fractures spread across the vision's firmament, light leaking through like veins of fire.
"…either you guide what happens next," Darian finished, "or others will guide it for you."
The sky moaned.
The courtyard split.
The vision trembled.
"Time's up," he said softly.
"Wait," she blurted. "If you had one more chance to speak to Serena, what would you tell her? Now. After everything."
His expression twisted.
"I would tell her she was right to hate me," he said. "But wrong to let that hatred shape the whole world."
The ground under her feet gave way.
She fell.
Not down.
Back.
⸻
She slammed into her body with a gasp.
Air—real air, warm and faintly smelling of soap and wood polish—rushed into her lungs. The hard surface of the dining chair was under her again. Her grandmother's hand was on her shoulder, gripping too tight. Her mother's palm cupped her cheek.
"Amara!" Mum's voice was raw. "Amara, look at me."
Her eyes flew open.
The room looked the same.
And completely different.
She could see the magic now.
Fine, glowing threads ran along the walls—old sigils carved into the concrete beneath the paint, humming softly. Her grandmother's aura glowed like layered cloth—gold, green, a faint blue at the edges. Her mother's flickered more, like a flame struggling against wind.
Outside, beyond the window, the sky was alive.
Lines of energy crisscrossed above the street, most so faint only a trained eye could catch them. Some were tugged, frayed—like someone had been meddling with them recently.
The world was no longer just matter.
It was pattern.
It was noise and light and structure.
"Breathe," Grandma ordered. "In. Out. Focus on my voice. How many fingers?"
She held up a hand.
"Five," Amara croaked. "But each one is… glowing. Can you put them away?"
Her grandmother actually huffed a laugh of relief.
"She's fine," Grandma said. "Overloaded, but fine."
"What did you see?" Mum whispered. "Tell me you didn't see them yet. Tell me it was just Serena."
"It was Serena," Amara said slowly. "And… not just her."
She swallowed.
"Darian," she said. "He left a… message. Echo. Vision voicemail, I don't know. For me."
Her mother's face darkened.
"That monster," she spat. "Even in death he's still putting his fingerprints everywhere."
"He warned me," Amara said quietly.
Her mother blinked. "Warned you?"
"About the Lucians," she said. "About their plans. About how they'll come at me—from different angles, with different strategies. About how if I don't steer what happens next, someone else will."
Grandma watched her with an unreadable expression.
"And do you trust him?" she asked softly. "The ghost of the man who killed our Court?"
Amara thought of the way he'd said I am tired.
The way his smile had broken when she threw his betrayal back in his face.
The way he'd said, You still have a chance not to let any vampire hold that kind of power over you.
"I don't trust him," she said. "But I believe him."
Grandma nodded slowly.
"That is closer to wisdom than most people get at your age," she said.
Amara tried to stand.
Her legs wobbled.
Her mother grabbed her elbow, steadying her.
"Easy," Mum said. "Your body is getting used to holding power. It's like giving a newborn weightlifter a 50kg dumbbell."
Amara snorted.
"So I'm a magical baby gym bro," she said weakly. "Nice."
She reached up instinctively to touch the necklace.
It lay warm against her collarbone now, chain snug, stone pulsing faintly.
When her fingers closed around it, the world sharpened—as if someone had adjusted the focus of a camera.
She could hear more.
The faint buzz of an insect in the corner.
A neighbor two houses away, arguing in low tones.
The soft flutter of her grandmother's heartbeat.
Too much.
She let go.
It all dimmed slightly.
"Can I… take it off?" she asked.
"No," Grandma said immediately. "Not yet. The anchor stabilizes the flow. Without it, your power might surge uncontrolled. And if that happens when you are outside…"
She didn't finish.
Mum did.
"People will notice," she said. "Someone will film it. Post it. Suddenly you are trending on TikTok as 'that witch girl'. And the wrong eyes will see."
Wrong eyes.
Lucian's eyes.
A shiver ran down Amara's spine.
"So what now?" she asked quietly. "I go to school tomorrow like nothing happened?"
"Yes," Grandma said.
Amara stared. "Seriously?"
"You will go," Grandma said firmly. "Because running now will only confirm their suspicions. But you will go different."
"How?" Amara asked. "My jeans will now come with magic?"
"You will learn," Grandma said. "From tonight, your training begins. Wards. Shields. Basic control. How to hide what you are. How to sense when someone is probing you. And…"
Her gaze sharpened.
"…how to lie to vampires."
Her mouth went dry.
"I thought you said not to talk to them," Amara said.
"I said not to trust them," Grandma countered. "Sometimes we must speak to those we do not trust. That is what masks are for."
Her mother leaned in.
"You will avoid this Lucian boy as much as possible," Mum said. "No eye contact. No small talk. If he tries to get close, you are busy. You have class. You have assignment. You have fake boyfriend. I don't care. Just don't give him reason to focus on you more than he already has."
Amara opened her mouth to protest—
—and felt it.
A tug.
Deep inside her chest.
Like someone had plucked a string that ran from her sternum out into the night.
She froze.
"Amara?" her grandmother asked sharply. "What is it?"
She swallowed.
"Someone just… touched my name," she whispered.
Her mother frowned. "Your name?"
"It's the only way I can describe it," Amara said, pressing her palm to her chest. "Like… like a hand ran along my spine from far away. Not in my body. In… the part of me that magic listens to."
Grandma's face tightened.
"Direction?" she asked.
Amara closed her eyes.
She let the sensation spread, tracking it—not with her ears or her skin, but with something new and strange. The tug was faint, but definite.
"Campus," she said. "Feel like… east. Near the big tree by the Performing Arts building."
Her stomach dropped.
"That's too specific," Mum said. "You've never done this before. How can you—"
"She's Serena's heir," Grandma cut in. "Of course she can track a call. Someone is thinking of her too closely. Pulling at her thread."
Her eyes went flinty.
"Lucian," she said.
Amara's heart stuttered.
"How can he already—" she began.
"When your seal broke, there would have been a spike," Grandma said grimly. "Like a flare in the dark. Any vampire of his line nearby with senses half-awake would have felt it. He won't know exactly what it is yet."
She met Amara's gaze.
"But he will know," Grandma finished, "that something very old and very important just woke up right under his nose."
⸻
On the other side of town, in a house too big for the street it stood on, Lucian sat up straight in bed.
The room was dark.
He preferred it that way.
But even in the dark, he could see perfectly.
His chest rose and fell slowly.
He had been half-asleep, drifting in that strange, shallow place where dreams felt like memories and memories felt like someone else's life.
Then something had hit him.
Not physically.
Inside.
A flare.
A rush of heat, then cold, then heat again.
His mark—an old, faint sigil just beneath his collarbone—burned for the first time in his life.
The sensation was gone in seconds.
But it left an echo.
A taste in his mouth he didn't recognize.
Power.
Old power.
His door opened without a sound.
Lucian didn't need to look to know who it was.
"You felt it," the woman in the doorway said.
His aunt's voice was smooth, every syllable measured.
"Yes," he said.
He turned his head.
In the faint light from the hallway, her eyes gleamed. Not red. Red was for hungry fledglings and dramatics in movies. Her eyes were a deep, velvety darkness with a hint of silver near the pupil.
"You've never felt something like that before," she said. Not a question.
"No," Lucian admitted.
"Describe it," she ordered.
He paused.
He thought of the girl in the courtyard. The one who'd looked at him like she couldn't decide whether to run or punch him.
"Old," he said slowly. "It felt… old. Like something waking up under the ground. And… familiar, in a way I don't have words for."
His aunt stepped farther into the room.
"The last time our line felt something like that," she said quietly, "the sky broke over the Witch Court and we lost a third of our number in one night."
His fingers tightened on the sheet.
"Serena," he said.
"Yes," his aunt replied. "Serena."
She came to stand beside the bed.
"Did you sense a direction?" she asked. "Even faint?"
He almost said no.
But lying to her was useless.
"Yes," he said. "Toward campus."
Her lips curved—not in a smile, exactly. In satisfaction.
"Then the stories were true," she murmured. "They hid the last of her line among humans. Clever little witches."
"Do you think it's her?" Lucian asked. "The heir?"
"I think," his aunt said, "that the timing is too neat to be coincidence. You meet a girl who feels… wrong. The air bends around her in small ways. She resists your read without trying. Then, a day later, this."
She looked down at him.
"How did you describe her?" she asked lazily. "Annoying? Interesting? Or was it the word you never like to use?"
He frowned.
"I never used any word," he said.
She arched a brow.
"In your head," she said. "You forget I've known you since your heart last beat on its own."
He hesitated.
His aunt waited.
"Bright," he said finally. "She felt… bright."
He remembered the way her presence had cut through the campus noise like a ray of sunlight in a dusty room.
"Bright," his aunt repeated. "How poetic."
She tipped his chin up with one cool finger.
"Be careful, Lucian," she said softly. "Our history with bright witches is… complicated."
He swallowed.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked.
Her eyes glittered.
"Get close," she said. "Without scaring her. Not yet. Watch her. Learn her. Find out who she is, who she lives with, what protections they've woven around her."
"And then?" he asked.
Her smile widened now, thin and sharp.
"Then," she said, "we decide whether she is a key… or a threat."
She turned to leave.
"Aunt," he said suddenly.
She paused.
"What if," he said slowly, "she's both?"
A key and a threat.
A promise and a warning.
His aunt glanced back.
"Then, little one," she said, "you must be very, very sure which part you are listening to when she looks at you."
The door clicked shut behind her.
Lucian lay back down.
He stared at the ceiling.
He could still feel the echo of that flare inside him, like a word on the tip of his tongue.
And somewhere, not too far away, he knew—
The girl from the courtyard had just become the most dangerous thing in his world.