December 1, 2025
Hugo Hollands, Age 25.
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I woke with a jolt, my whole body pulling upward before my mind could follow, as if some thread buried deep in my spine had been yanked hard enough to rip me out of whatever restless sleep I'd managed. The cell around me shifted slowly into focus. The light filtering through the narrow window had the color of early dawn—pale, bruised, hesitant—stretching across the wall in a thin blade that made the air feel colder than it was.
For a moment I stayed still, chest rising too fast, listening to the room breathe its stale silence back at me. Then something inside me tightened again, that tug—sharp, insistent, familiar in a way that made my skin prickle. I pushed myself upright, legs unsteady from days of confinement. The floor felt solid beneath my feet, but the world itself seemed tilted.
I walked toward the window, drawn to the sliver of sky outside as if it carried an answer. The glass was streaked from age, the light catching the scratches like it was trying to etch them deeper. My breath fogged in front of me even though the air wasn't cold. My pulse hammered a steady rhythm against my throat.
Then I felt it.
A presence. Heavy, deliberate, close enough that the air behind me shifted as though it had remembered it was meant to move around something that wasn't human.
I turned slowly.
And there he was.
Corvian stood within the narrow room, not in any borrowed shape but as himself—his real form, untouched by disguise or restraint. The sight hit me with such force I exhaled like the air had been punched out of me. My eyes burned instantly, and something in my chest cracked open, relief spilling through me so fast it almost hurt.
He didn't smile. He didn't speak. He simply was, and the room felt too small to hold him.
I crossed the distance between us without thinking. My hands reached for him, clutching at the fabric of his coat, the edges of him both solid and unreal at once. The first sob ripped through my throat before I could stop it, raw and ugly and helpless. Tears blurred everything, turning him into a dark shape surrounded by light.
"Easy," he murmured, lowering his head just enough for his voice to curl around me. "Easy."
I pressed my face into his chest, fingers tightening as if he might disappear again if I loosened my grip for even a second. The warmth of him wrapped around me when he brought his arms up, one settling between my shoulders, the other cradling the back of my head. I trembled against him, the days of silence, the fear, the heat in my bones—all of it shuddering through me at once.
"Where the fuck have you been?" My voice cracked, almost swallowed by the sound of my breathing. "Where the fuck were you?"
He stroked his hand down my back, not gentle but grounding, his tone steady in a way that made something inside me steady with it. "Trying to save your ass."
I held him tighter, knuckles whitening against him. For a moment neither of us moved. The weight of the days I had spent alone in this cell pressed against my spine, finally given shape by the fact that he was here.
Eventually I pulled back, wiping my face with the heel of my palm, trying to gather myself. My throat still shook when I spoke.
"Any good news? Anything at all? Because I'm losing it in here, Corvian. I beat a guy up two days ago—blood everywhere—and if they keep me in this box any longer, I'll unleash everything on everyone. I can feel it under my skin. It won't stop."
Corvian's expression shifted, something dark flickering through it before the corner of his mouth lifted.
"Couldn't be more proud," he said. "You're finally putting your strength to use."
A laugh almost escaped me—hollow, exhausted—but the ache inside didn't loosen. He went quiet after that, the silence thickening until I knew the next words wouldn't be good.
"I don't have good news," he said. "None."
My stomach sank. My breath caught.
"Expect to see Harry today. In the session."
I frowned. "Harry? Why the hell would Harry—"
"Yes," Corvian cut in softly. "He… Hugo, you marked him wrongly. His soul took too long to leave. Your aunt found him and sent him to the hospital. There were complications. Long story short, the police know you're accompanied by a devil. And something in Harry is helping them."
My breath punched out of me in a frantic stutter.
"Harry?" I choked. "Harry—my cousin Harry? He's helping the police?"
"Yes." Corvian's gaze held mine, steady but edged with frustration. "And whatever he is going through, I cannot undo it. It's not something I can manage or control."
"So I have no choice?" My voice rose, panic clawing up my throat. "No choice at all? I'm done for?"
Corvian stepped closer, the space between us shrinking until the heat radiating from him pressed into my chest.
"Let's see what your lawyer does," he said. "If that doesn't work… I have a solution."
My heartbeat stilled. "What is it?"
"Not now." His tone dropped, almost a growl. "This must be your last resort. You must be desperate enough to accept it. You still have hope. I can feel it."
My shoulders fell, the weight of his words dragging something out of me. I sank onto the slab of a bed, the cold surface grounding my shaking legs. Corvian watched me from across the cell, his form impossibly still, the room bending around him like it feared him.
"You can see and hear me now because of the marking," he said. "You didn't burn when you touched me because of the marking. That tells you something."
I looked up at him, lost, tired, defeated. "What does that tell me?"
"That there is still a way." His eyes narrowed, the darkness in them deepening. "You are mine, Hugo. I won't let you rot here."
The cell door swung open, banging against the wall.
"Hollands," the guard barked. "Get ready to leave. Why's it hot in here?" he muttered, rubbing his forearm. "Feels like the vents are blowing wrong."
I stood slowly, wiping my face with the back of my hand. "I'm ready."
The guard motioned impatiently. "Let's go."
He couldn't see Corvian. He couldn't see the way the devil's true form filled the space behind me like a shadow older than the walls themselves.
But I turned anyway.
One more look. One more breath of him. One more second to keep myself from folding.
Corvian stood unmoving, eyes fixed on me with all the promise of a blade waiting to be drawn.
Then I stepped out of the cell, following the guard into whatever the day intended to destroy next.
The guard walked ahead with the kind of pride that came from carrying keys and knowing every locked door would answer to him. His radio crackled against his hip while he guided me through the corridor, my wrists cuffed, the chain biting gently against my skin each time my hands shifted. The air smelled of disinfectant and old breath, the mixture settling in the throat like something meant to quiet the spirit rather than cleanse the place.
When we reached the final gate, another officer stood waiting beside the reinforced bars, clipboard in hand. He lifted his eyes, looked me over with the detached interest reserved for livestock, then turned to my escort.
"Where you taking him?"
"Court transfer," my guard answered. "Hollands, Hugo. Session at nine. Paperwork's already sent through."
The other officer nodded, scribbling something on the sheet, then pulled the gate open. The sound carried through the narrow hall with an unkind echo. As we stepped into the colder section of the building, the outside seeped in through a line of barred windows—thin stripes of morning light cutting across the floor like some half-hearted blessing.
My breaths felt heavier the closer we got to the exit, like the air thickened with every step. My thoughts spun around a single point that refused to loosen its grip.
Harry.
Back from wherever the hell he'd been dragged after I marked him. Alive. Walking around in the world. Helping the police.
The idea twisted inside my chest, sharp enough to bruise. I didn't know whether to feel sick, afraid, ashamed, or furious. None of them seemed right on their own. It sat in me like a knot, heavy and cold and pulsing with a memory I had never meant to keep.
The guard's hand tightened on my arm as he steered me across the small courtyard toward the waiting van. One of those boxy, white transport vehicles with too many locks and too few windows. He opened the back door, ducked his head inside to check the bench and restraints, then motioned for me to climb in.
"Watch your step."
I didn't answer. My boots hit the metal floor, the sound swallowed by the cramped interior. He secured the cuffs to the bracket beside me. The latch clicked into place with a clean finality that settled in my bones.
The door slammed shut, and darkness wrapped the space for a moment before a thin strip of morning light slipped in through the small window above my head. The engine sputtered, shuddered, then steadied into life. The whole van trembled, and something about the movement made the knot in my stomach press deeper.
Harry. God. Harry. My cousin, pale and crying in the memory I kept trying to push away, lying on the bed while I held the pendant burning against his back. His face gone slack with fear, the breath slipping out of him like it had nowhere left to go.
Now he was walking around in a police uniform. Sitting somewhere in this city. Talking to investigators. Describing me.
Helping them.
The van pulled out, tires cracking over the gravel, and the city spread itself in front of us through the narrow slit of glass. Buildings passed slowly, their windows catching the pale morning and throwing it back. Every turn the van made felt like a deliberate decision to remind me of how trapped I was, how every road led me only where they wanted to take me.
The ride stretched into something sluggish and unpleasant, as if the distance between the prison and the court had expanded overnight. Every minute dragged, each second falling through me like a drop of oil sinking deeper and deeper.
Harry's name kept returning, circling the inside of my head like a voice climbing out of the dark.
Harry in the courtroom. Harry looking at me. Harry speaking to them.
The thought pushed against my ribs until my breath came uneven. The van swayed, wheels rolling over some patch in the road, and I felt the whole world tilt inside me. It was impossible to tell whether the journey was long or whether my thoughts made it feel endless.
All I knew was that the road refused to end.
It stretched on and on, winding through the morning with a patience I didn't have, dragging me toward a place I was never meant to walk into. The knot inside me tightened, and I pressed my wrists together, feeling the cuffs dig just enough to remind me I had no control over where I was going.
Outside, the city kept moving. Inside, I stayed pinned between the past I couldn't undo and the future waiting to carve itself into me.
And somewhere ahead— Harry waited.
The waiting room they shoved me into wasn't really a room—more like a holding cage someone tried to disguise with a coat of beige paint. The walls carried old scuff marks near the floor, the kind made by restless feet pacing the same narrow strip over and over. A single bench ran along one side, its surface cold enough to tighten my jaw when I sat. The air was stale with dust and the residue of too many people breathing fear into the same enclosed space.
The guard who escorted me didn't linger. He locked the door with a sharp twist of his wrist, muttered something about staying put, and disappeared back down the corridor, leaving me with the quiet. Not real quiet—the kind that sneaks under your skin and draws everything inside you closer to the surface, until your thoughts feel too loud and your blood feels too warm.
I lowered my head, elbows on my knees, hands dangling between them. My wrists still ached from the chain. The ride over kept churning inside me, every turn of the van stirring up pieces of memory I wasn't ready to carry. The knot in my gut hadn't eased since Corvian said Harry's name. It sat there like something lodged in the wrong place, refusing to move.
I pressed my palms together. Tried to breathe in steadier lines.
Footsteps sounded outside—two sets, one heavier than the other, the echo sliding under the door before the handle clicked. The door opened, and Logan stepped in, closing it behind him as if that gave us privacy. He looked worn out already, eyes tight, hair unruly in a way that told me he'd been working since dawn, maybe earlier. His coat hung open over a wrinkled shirt, the collar askew, as if he'd rushed across the building faster than he meant to.
"Hugo," he said, and the exhale behind my name carried too much weight for a morning this early.
I straightened, the chain at my wrists clinking softly as I shifted. "Logan."
He didn't come closer right away. He stood in front of the door for a moment, staring at me like he was taking in details he hadn't expected—the tiredness in my face, the days of solitary confinement wrapped around my posture, the heat still trapped under my skin. Then he moved toward me and sat beside me on the bench, leaving just enough space so I could tell he didn't want to crowd me but also didn't want to stand apart from me.
"You look…" He stopped himself, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and settled on, "Rough few days?"
"That's one way to put it."
He nodded slowly, eyes tracing the floor before lifting back to me. "I got the report about the fight."
"So did everyone else," I muttered.
"Is what you told them true?" His voice dropped to something low, steady, careful—like he already knew the answer but wanted to hear it from me anyway.
"Yeah," I said. "He pushed me. Kept pushing. Tried something in the showers. I snapped."
Logan pursed his lips, absorbing that. "Alright. We can work with that. If they logged it as PREA-related, we push administrative seg as protective, not punitive. Same isolation, different story. We will work with that."
He set his briefcase on the floor between his feet, fingers tapping against the latch before he opened it. Papers sat inside, highlighted and marked with tabs. He didn't pull any of them out yet. He just stared at them for a moment, like he was figuring out how to start.
"Hugo…" he said softly. "There's something I need to tell you before we go in there."
The knot tightened instantly. I sat straighter. "What?"
Logan hesitated—an actual hesitation, not his lawyer version of gentle pacing. His jaw tensed. His eyes flicked toward my hands, the cuffs, my bruised knuckles.
"It's about Harry."
Everything in my chest went cold.
"What about him?" I asked, but my voice already sounded lost, threaded with anger and dread all at once.
Logan glanced at the door, as if making sure we were alone, then lowered his voice even more. "He's here. Today. He's testifying."
I stared at him, unable to move for a moment, the world shifting under the bench like something had loosened its grip on the floor.
"Testifying?" I repeated. "Against me?"
Logan grimaced. "He's… involved in ways I don't fully understand yet. He's been working with the investigators. Something happened to him the night you two—" He cut himself off, then tried again. "He was found in a rough state, brought to a hospital, and questioned after. He's cooperating."
"Cooperating." The word tore itself from my mouth with a bitterness I didn't have the strength to hide. "Harry's cooperating," I said, and it tasted like penny-blood.
Logan placed a hand on my shoulder, not forceful, just grounding. "I know this is a shock. I know it's the last thing you needed right now. But I need you steady when we go in. I need you present. If you fall apart in front of that judge, they'll feast on it."
My breath came uneven, that heat under my skin threatening to crawl up my throat. I pressed my cuffed hands to my face, dragging them down slowly.
"What the hell happened to him?" I whispered. "What did I do? What did they do? Why would he—" The words tangled, unraveling before they formed.
Logan looked at me with something close to sympathy, something strained and exhausted. "I'm not sure. But we'll manage what we can. We still have a case, Hugo. We still have an angle. I'm not letting you drown in there."
I nodded, even though nothing in me felt steady. The air felt too warm, too crowded, as if someone else stood behind me in the room. The mark pulsed once against my ribs, subtle but undeniable, and for a moment I felt Corvian's presence—distant, watching, waiting.
Logan gathered his papers and closed the briefcase. "They'll call us any minute. I need you to breathe. And look at me."
I did.
He held my gaze with firm, tired insistence. "You are not alone in this room. And you are not walking into that courtroom without me."
But even with his words pressed close to my ear, even with his promise, the name Harry kept echoing through me like a prophecy I had never meant to write.
The door handle shifted outside.
Logan straightened. I drew in a breath that tasted like fear and leftover strength.
And the waiting room seemed to shrink around us as the guard opened the door.
The corridor outside the courtroom felt colder than the holding room, the kind of cold that didn't belong to air conditioning or winter drafts but to the building itself—old stone drinking every emotion that had passed through it over decades, letting nothing leave without taking something in return. The guard walked ahead of me with steady steps, the chain on my cuffs catching the light in uneven glints as we moved. Logan kept close on my right, briefcase in hand, his jaw set tight as though each step cost him more than he wanted to admit.
We reached the double doors leading into the courtroom lobby. Voices drifted from the other side—low murmurs, shifting fabric, someone clearing their throat, the sound of a gavel being tested against wood. It all blended into a restless murmur that made my pulse spike.
The guard paused, resting one hand on the door handle while looking back at me. "You walk in when I say," he muttered, then turned to Logan. "Counselor, you know the drill."
Logan didn't respond. He adjusted his tie, exhaled through his nose, and gave me a look that tried—tried—to reassure me even though the tremor in his fingertips betrayed how stretched thin he was.
The door swung open.
Light from the courtroom spilled into the hallway—bright, unforgiving, pouring over the floor and touching the cuffs at my wrists like it wanted to expose every flaw in me. The guard stepped inside first, calling out my name to the officers stationed near the front.
"Hugo Hollands, escorted for arraignment."
Every head in the gallery seemed to turn at once. Their eyes caught on me as if I had stepped into a spotlight—faces I didn't recognize, expressions warped by curiosity or disgust or a kind of anxious fascination. The room smelled of old varnish and paper, a stale closeness trapped under fresh paint that didn't hide the age of the place.
I walked forward, guided by the guard's grip on my arm. Each step sounded too loud—shoe against tile, breath in my ears, the soft clatter of my cuffs shifting when I moved. My throat felt tight, as if someone had wrapped a hand around it from the inside.
The long rows of benches flickered past in a blur, though my gaze snagged on each face I couldn't place. A woman clutching a file. A man whispering to the person beside him. A cluster of officers near the back, watching me with practiced indifference. Somewhere deeper in the room, I felt a presence shift—distant, cautious. Corvian watching, even if he stayed unseen.
Logan walked just behind me, close enough that I could hear his breath catch when we reached the defense table. He stepped around me, placed his briefcase on the desk, and leaned toward the judge's bench where court staff were already preparing documents.
The guard positioned me beside the chair, motioning for me to stay put until the judge entered. My cuffs stayed on. The chain felt heavier now, pulling my hands downward as if trying to anchor me to the floor.
I glanced around slowly, letting the shape of the room settle into my mind—the high ceiling etched with old patterns, the flags standing stiff at the front, the cluster of microphones, the wooden barrier separating me from whoever had come to watch me being dismantled.
And then I saw him.
Harry.
He sat several rows behind the prosecution table, posture straight, hands folded in his lap. His police uniform looked too crisp on him, as if it belonged to someone steadier. His face held no emotion, no hint of the boy who once shared little secrets with me at family gatherings or trailed behind me through Aunt Lila's backyard.
His eyes lifted.
They found mine with a precision that made the breath in my chest jolt.
The room fell away for a second.
I didn't see the judge entering. I didn't hear the shuffle of people rising. I didn't notice Logan stepping in front of me, blocking part of Harry from view.
All I felt was the pull—the awful, choking pull of recognition mixed with something colder. Something wrong. Something watching me through him.
Because whatever looked through Harry's eyes now wasn't entirely Harry. It watched through him the way scripture looks through glass—recording alignment, not words.
Logan nudged my arm, voice low. "Don't react. Not yet. Keep your eyes forward."
I forced myself to swallow, the taste of dread sliding thick down my throat. The judge's footsteps echoed as he climbed the dais. Papers were set down. The bailiff's voice boomed:
"All rise."
The entire room stood, and the first real moment of the hearing began to unfold. My knees trembled under the weight of it, the cuffs tightening slightly when I tried to steady myself.
I felt the mark in my chest pulse once—deep, warning, alive.
And the courtroom—bright, cold, merciless—waited to open its jaws.