Elara Wolfe awoke on the floor of her apartment with the taste of iron still sharp on her tongue, her head pounding as if someone had beaten it with a hammer. The morning sun filtered weakly through the blinds, painting the room in stripes of gold and gray. She looked around in confusion. Her bed was rumpled, her clothes scattered, and the journal she always kept by the nightstand lay on the floor, its pages torn and splayed.A cold wave of panic swept through her. How had she ended up here? Her body ached in places she couldn't identify, small bruises on her arms and wrists, smudges of dirt on her palms. She tried to recall the previous night or whatever had come before this morning but her mind was blank, an empty corridor with nothing to hold onto.Her phone buzzed. She scrambled to pick it up, nearly dropping it in her shaking hands. Missed calls. Multiple messages from unknown numbers, and one from Dorian Beck, reading simply: "Call me. Now."A sudden knock at the door made her flinch, nearly throwing the phone across the room. Her mind reeled it was too early for anyone to visit. The knocks came again, firm this time, insistent. She hesitated, fear coiling in her stomach. Slowly, cautiously, she approached the door and peered through the peephole.
Dorian Beck stood there, his expression unreadable but calm, his eyes scanning her apartment through the peephole before they landed on hers. His presence was commanding yet measured, the kind of man who could hold you in place with a single glance."Elara," he said softly as she opened the door, "you need to come with me."
"What… what happened last night?" Her voice trembled, though she didn't know why.
"You don't remember," Dorian said, stepping closer. "And that's part of the problem."Elara felt her pulse accelerate, her mind spinning. She had been having these blackouts for weeks now. Hours sometimes entire nights disappeared from her memory, leaving only bruises, scratches, and faint traces of evidence she didn't understand."I… I can't remember anything," she admitted, her voice breaking. "I… I'm scared."You're not alone," he said. "But you're in danger from someone… or something inside your own mind."She felt a shiver run down her spine. "Inside… my own mind?"
Dorian's expression was grave. "Yes. You're not just… fractured emotionally. You're fractured literally. Parts of you are acting without your awareness. And one of those parts — Raven — is emerging in ways you don't fully understand."Elara swallowed hard. Raven. She had felt her presence before in fleeting flashes, in the corners of her vision, in sudden urges she couldn't explain. But she had never confronted it so directly, never been forced to acknowledge that part of herself as real, active, conscious.Her stomach twisted as she realized the implications. If Raven was emerging, who was really in control? And if Raven was protecting her… why did it feel like the world was closing in on her anyway?
Dorian guided her down the streets in silence, his presence a steady anchor against the storm inside her. They walked past alleyways that reminded her too vividly of her visions, of the red fog, the blood, the screaming faces. Each shadow seemed to reach for her, twisting and stretching unnaturally, as if mocking her inability to distinguish reality from hallucination.At a small, unassuming building at the edge of the city, Dorian led her inside. The lobby was dimly lit, almost sterile, and smelled faintly of antiseptic and old paper. He took her up a narrow flight of stairs and into a small room at the end of the hallway.
The room was sparsely furnished: a single chair, a desk stacked with files, and in the corner, a large mirror draped with a dark cloth. Dorian turned to her."Sit," he instructed. "And don't look around."Elara obeyed, heart hammering. Every instinct screamed at her that something was wrong, but she didn't know what. Dorian pulled the cloth from the mirror.What she saw made her freeze. The reflection wasn't just her own. Behind her, moving subtly, fluidly, was Raven.
The shadow of her other self. The protector. The part she didn't understand."She's always been here," Dorian said. "Watching. Protecting. But now… someone else is here too. And she's not the only fragment of you you need to worry about."Elara's pulse spiked. The red fog she had seen in her visions crept around the edges of the mirror, curling like smoke. Her stomach twisted. She realized with absolute clarity that she was no longer safe — not in the world, and certainly not in her own mind.