The gothic mountain lodge rose from the snowstorm like a nightmare carved from ice and stone. Gargoyles perched on its eaves, their mouths frozen mid-scream as wind howled through the valleys below. Inside, taxidermied wolves lined the walls with glassy eyes that seemed to track movement, while antique mirrors reflected not the present moment but fragments of different timelines—shadows of what was, what could be, what should never happen.
Aria stood before the massive stone fireplace, the only source of light since the storm had killed the power hours ago. The flames cast dancing shadows across her face, highlighting the exhaustion etched into her features. Three days had passed since the neural sync with Kael, and his presence still crawled through her mind like smoke through a house fire.
"Magnificent, isn't it?" Adrian's voice carried cultured amusement as he descended the grand staircase, wine glass in hand despite the early hour. His family had owned this lodge for generations, each room filled with their collected horrors. "My great-grandfather used to hunt wolves here. Said the mountains made them desperate, unpredictable." His pale eyes fixed on her with predatory interest. "Rather like us, wouldn't you say?"
Thunder crashed outside—no, not thunder. The sound of something massive hitting the lodge's exterior walls. Marcus stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, his reflection barely visible in the storm-darkened glass. "Tree branches," he said without turning around. "Storm's getting worse. We're trapped until it passes."
Trapped. The word settled in Aria's stomach like a stone. Five men, one woman, and a mountain lodge cut off from the world. The setup felt like the beginning of either a fairy tale or a horror story—and she was beginning to suspect those were the same thing.
Kael emerged from the shadows near the piano, because of course there was a piano. But this wasn't any ordinary instrument—it was carved entirely from ice, its keys gleaming like frozen tears in the firelight. Each note would produce only silence now, the cold having claimed its voice long ago.
"You're shaking," Kael observed, his scarred hands hanging loose at his sides. The neural link between them hummed with shared sensation, and she could feel his awareness of her body temperature, her racing pulse, the way her breath came too quick and shallow.
"I'm fine." The lie tasted bitter on her tongue.
"Take my jacket." He shrugged out of the leather bomber, revealing arms mapped with fresh surgical scars from Phoenix's latest modifications. The jacket still held his body heat, smelling of gunpowder and something darker.
"I said I'm fine."
Kael's green eyes glittered with dangerous amusement. "Stubborn little mouse. We'll see how long that lasts."
Phoenix appeared in the doorway connecting to his makeshift medical bay, surgical gloves snapping as he removed them. His gray eyes swept over the group with clinical detachment that fooled no one. "The storm's electromagnetic interference is affecting our equipment. We're completely isolated."
"Good," Dante purred from his position near the bar, amber liquid swirling in his crystal tumbler. His spider pendant caught the firelight, the silver arachnid seeming to pulse with its own heartbeat. "Privacy has such... potential."
Hours passed in tense silence, the storm showing no signs of abating. Aria had claimed a leather armchair near the fire, pulling her knees to her chest as exhaustion weighed down her limbs. The neural link with Kael meant she hadn't truly slept in days—every time she closed her eyes, his memories bled through her dreams like acid through fabric.
She must have dozed despite herself, because she woke to find Kael's jacket wrapped around her shoulders and his military dog tags clenched in her fist. The metal was warm from her skin, engraved with numbers that probably meant nothing and everything.
How did these get here?
Across the room, Kael watched her with those unsettling green eyes. I told you I'd keep you warm, little mouse.
His voice in her head made her skin crawl and burn simultaneously. She wanted to throw the jacket back at him, but the lodge was frigid beyond the fire's reach, and she was already shivering again.
"Well, well." Adrian rose from his spot near the windows, moving with liquid grace toward an ornate cabinet. "Since we're all trapped together like characters in a gothic novel, perhaps we should embrace the cliché." He produced a bottle of absinthe, its green contents swirling with oily luminescence. "A little game to pass the time."
"I don't think—" Aria started.
"Truth or dare, darling, but with my own twist." Adrian's smile was sharp as winter wind. "Confess a lie you've told, or drink. But be warned—this particular vintage has been enhanced with neural suppressants. Too much, and you'll start seeing things that aren't there. Or perhaps things that are more real than reality itself."
Phoenix stiffened. "Neural suppressants can cause severe hallucinations, especially in combination with alcohol."
"Hence the fun," Adrian replied, already pouring five glasses of the luminescent liquid. "Who's brave enough to play?"
This is insane, Aria thought, but found herself accepting a glass anyway. The absinthe caught the firelight like liquid emerald, beautiful and toxic.
"I'll start." Phoenix's voice was steady, clinical. He raised his glass but didn't drink. "I don't dream about you." His gray eyes met Aria's across the room. "That's the lie. Every night, I dream about carving my name into your skin so beautifully that you'd thank me for the privilege."
He set down his glass untouched. The confession hung in the air like smoke.
Dante laughed, the sound rich and dangerous. "My turn." He didn't even pretend to consider drinking. "I've killed everyone who's ever touched you. Every boy who held your hand in school, every man who looked at you too long, every woman who dared call herself your friend." His dark eyes glittered with satisfaction. "That's not a lie—that's a love letter written in blood."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Aria's hands trembled around her glass, the absinthe sloshing like liquid poison.
"Your turn, cara mia," Dante purred.
She couldn't think of a single lie that felt safe to confess. Instead, she raised the glass to her lips and drank.
The absinthe burned like liquid fire down her throat, tasting of anise and something darker. Almost immediately, the world began to shift around the edges. The taxidermied wolves on the walls turned their heads to watch her. The mirrors reflected not her face but the faces of children—younger versions of the men surrounding her, before the experiments, before the corruption, when they might have been innocent.
Phoenix as a boy, maybe twelve, with bandaged hands and eyes full of tears. "Please don't make me hurt anyone else."
Dante at fourteen, kneeling in a pool of blood that wasn't his own, begging someone off-screen: "I did what you asked. Can I see her now? Please?"
Kael barely sixteen, strapped to a table while scientists carved neural implants into his skull. His mouth moving soundlessly, over and over: "Aria. Aria. Aria."
"Fascinating," Adrian murmured, watching her pupils dilate. "The suppressants are already taking effect. What do you see, darling?"
Before she could answer, the lodge door exploded inward. Marcus stood silhouetted against the storm, snow whipping around him like a living thing. "Training exercise," he announced, his voice cutting through the wind. "Aria. Outside. Now."
"Are you insane?" Phoenix shot to his feet. "The temperature's dropping below zero. She'll get hypothermia."
"She'll get stronger." Marcus's pale eyes fixed on her with military precision. "Or she'll get dead. Either way, she'll learn something valuable."
This is how I die, Aria thought as Marcus hauled her toward the door. Frozen to death by a madman in a mountain storm.
But then Kael was there, grabbing Marcus's wrist with inhuman strength. "Touch her again and I'll paint this lodge with your blood."
"Will you?" Marcus smiled, the expression cold as the storm outside. "Or will you follow us into the snow like a good little lapdog?"
The challenge hung between them, testosterone and violence crackling in the air. Before either could move, Dante appeared with his blade already drawn, the steel gleaming with fresh poison.
"Enough games." His voice carried deadly authority. "She goes nowhere without my permission."
"And who gave you the right to grant permission?" Adrian's cultured tones cut through the tension like silk wrapped around steel. "If memory serves, we're all equally invested in her... development."
Phoenix moved to block the door, his surgical tools appearing in his hands like magic. "This is medically inadvisable. The neural suppressants combined with extreme cold could cause permanent brain damage."
"Good," Marcus said simply. "Damaged things fight harder to survive."
The argument escalated, voices rising over the storm's howl. But Aria barely heard them. The absinthe was hitting her system hard now, and the world had taken on a dreamlike quality. The ice piano seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat, and she could swear she heard music—a lullaby her father used to hum, played on keys carved from bone.
Kael's bones, whispered a voice that might have been her own thoughts or might have been something else entirely. Each key carved from his knuckles, so every note you play breaks him a little more.
She stumbled toward the instrument, drawn by morbid fascination. Her fingers hovered over the keys, and in the ice's surface, she saw her reflection—but wrong. The reflection winked at her with eyes that held too much knowledge, mouthing words that made no sound: "Why choose just one?"
"Aria!" Phoenix's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Don't touch that. The cold will burn your skin."
But she was already pressing down on the keys, and instead of music, she heard screaming. Not from the piano—from inside her own head. Kael's voice, raw with agony: Let me in completely, little mouse. Let me make them all kneel.
The world tilted, colors bleeding together like watercolors in rain. She was running through snow that cut like glass shards, bare feet leaving bloody prints in the white. Behind her, the sound of pursuit—not human feet but paws, wolves with eyes like mirrors and collars stamped with her childhood initials: A.C.
Aria Catherine. Daddy's little soldier.
She crashed into something solid—a frozen oak tree, its bark rough against her cheek. Then hands gripped her shoulders, spinning her around. Kael's face filled her vision, his breath steaming in the frigid air.
"Let me in again," he whispered, pinning her against the tree. "I'll keep you warm. Keep you safe. Keep you mine."
His mouth was inches from hers, and she could feel the heat radiating from his skin like a furnace. The neural link between them pulsed with shared need, shared desperation. She wanted to lean into him, wanted to let him consume her completely—
"She's not your fucking campfire."
Dante appeared like shadow made flesh, his blade pressed to Kael's throat hard enough to draw blood. "Remove your hands or lose them."
"Make me," Kael snarled, not moving away from Aria. "She came to me. She wants this."
"Do you?" Dante's dark eyes met hers over Kael's shoulder. "Do you want him, cara mia? Or do you want to come home where you belong?"
The choice hung between them like a blade. But before she could answer, the world exploded into hallucination again.
Suddenly she was back in the lodge, but everything was wrong. Phoenix knelt beside her chair, stitching her name into his own skin with surgical precision. Each letter wept blood onto the Persian rug, but his hands never trembled. "Almost finished," he murmured to himself. "Then you'll never forget who you belong to."
Adrian sat at the ice piano, feeding cash into the fireplace to keep a oil painting warm—a portrait of her sleeping, painted with obsessive detail. "Money means nothing," he said without looking up. "But you're priceless."
And in the corner, barely visible in the shadows, Marcus knelt before a ghostly figure that could only be her father. His lips moved in silent confession, words of apology that came twenty years too late.
"Choose," the ghost whispered, and its voice was her father's but also her own. "Choose which monster gets to keep you."
I don't want to choose, she thought desperately. I want to run.
Then run, whispered her reflection in the ice piano. But we both know you'll come back. They're in your blood now, little mouse. Part of your DNA.
The hallucination shattered as real hands touched her face. All five of them, surrounding her in a circle. Phoenix checking her pulse. Dante warming her cheek with his palm. Adrian studying her pupils. Marcus testing her reflexes. And Kael—Kael breathing warmth back into her blue-tinged lips, each exhale stealing another fragment of her autonomy.
"Her body temperature's dropping," Phoenix announced, clinical detachment cracking to reveal panic underneath. "We need to get her warm. Now."
They carried her to the fireplace, stripping away wet clothes with efficiency that spoke of practice. Blankets appeared from somewhere, wrapped around her like a cocoon. But the cold seemed to come from inside her bones, spreading through her veins like black ice.
"What's happening to me?" she gasped, and her voice sounded strange—layered, as if someone else was speaking in harmony with her words.
Phoenix's face went white as he examined her arms. Black lines traced her veins like ink, spreading upward from her wrists toward her heart. "The neural link," he breathed. "It's not just psychological anymore. He's actually changing your cellular structure."
Kael's eyes blazed with possessive satisfaction. "Finally. I was wondering when you'd stop fighting it."
"This is killing her," Phoenix snarled, reaching for his surgical kit. "I can cut the infection out, but it'll destroy every memory you have of him. Every thought, every feeling, every trace of his presence in your mind."
"No." Kael's voice carried absolute authority. "She chose this. She chose me."
"Did I?" Aria's reflection asked from the ice piano, and everyone turned to stare. The surface of the instrument showed not the room they were in but somewhere else—a cemetery under starlight, where a girl in a white dress danced alone among the graves.
The reflection winked, mouthing words that chilled the air: "Why choose at all?"