~LENORA'S POV
The room was too quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that soothed, but the kind that pressed against my ears until my thoughts began to echo back at me. The walls were smooth dark stones, and I could feel how cold they were even from where I sat on the edge of the bed.
No windows. No cracks. No mercy.
This room wasn't built to comfort.
It was built to contain.
Zephyrus had left without a word.
Not that I'd expected one.
The door had closed behind him with a finality, and the sound sunk into my chest like a weight I couldn't cough up.
I'd rushed to it anyway—futile, stupid, my desperate palms flat against the surface, fingers trembling as if the stone might suddenly soften, as if it might remember what doors were supposed to do and open.
It didn't.
Of course it didn't.
I slid down until my back hit the floor, my knees drawn tight to my chest. My breath came shallow and uneven, while my heart raced like it was still running even though I'd already lost.
This was it.
This was where all my bad decisions had led me.
Hell.
I let out a broken laugh, the sound sharp and wrong in the silence. It echoed once, then died.
I pressed my forehead against my knees and squeezed my eyes shut, as if darkness might erase what I couldn't face.
How had everything gone so wrong so fast?
Days ago….no, longer than that, though it felt like days but at least I was amongst humans. Ordinary. Trapped in a life I didn't love, sure, but at least it had been mine. I'd known the rules. I'd known the limits. Gravity stayed down. Death stayed final. Monsters stayed in stories.
Now?
Now I was locked in a room beneath a world that wasn't meant for people like me, guarded by creatures pulled straight from myth and nightmare. My fate discussed like an object being weighed, measured, and placed where it best served someone else's purpose.
I thought of the brothers.
The instant I had crossed paths with them was the moment everything l tilted sideways.
The way the air itself had shifted around them, heavier, charged, like reality bending just slightly out of alignment. Their eyes were too sharp, too knowing, and the sense that they weren't just dangerous, but inevitable didn't settle right with me.
They were beautiful in the way storms were beautiful.
God, how stupid I'd been.
Why didn't I notice they felt odd.
I dug my fingers into my hair, nails scraping my scalp as my thoughts began to spiral.
Had I done something? Broken something I hadn't known existed? Was this punishment? A cosmic joke?
What sin could possibly justify this?
I rocked forward, then back, the movement small and frantic. My head felt too full, my thoughts slamming into each other with nowhere to go.
I couldn't stay still.
I pushed myself up and began pacing the room, bare feet whispering against the stone. Back and forth. Back and forth. Each step felt like a lie, like my movement were meant to make me escape even though every part of me knew there was nowhere to run.
No matter how far I went, I was still here.
I stopped suddenly, the pressure building behind my eyes was sharp enough to make my vision blur.
Maybe if I hit my head hard enough, I'd wake up from this nightmare because there was no way this was real.
The thought startled me, ugly and intrusive. I sucked in a shaky breath and pressed my palms to my temples.
Stop.
Don't go there.
But the silence didn't help. It just gave my thoughts room to grow teeth.
I turned, my back hitting the wall, sliding down until I was sitting again. My knee bounced uncontrollably, and I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hold together the pieces that felt like they were coming loose.
This couldn't be real.
Demons didn't exist.
Hell didn't exist.
Ancient worlds and shadowy monsters with - my thoughts retraced backwards and just like something had clicked on my mind.
Shadowy.
Shadows, hazy, and distant noises.
The name Dove.
Dreams-
My dreams.
Oh God. My stomach dropped at the thoughts of my dreams being connected to the brothers.
"You can sit yourself raw against the stone," a voice said calmly, "and it still won't move."
I froze.
Every muscle locked at once, with my breath catching painfully in my throat, as I lifted my head slowly.
Lucian stood near the far wall.
I didn't see him move. I didn't see him shift nor arrive.
He had simply just been there.
The light in the room was low, barely enough to soften the edges of the stone, but his eyes—
They glowed.
A cold, luminous blue bled from his irises, faint but unmistakable, cutting through the dim like twin crystals beneath ice. The glow wasn't bright, it didn't need to be.
But It felt intentional and focused, like something ancient had opened its eyes in the dark and decided to look directly at me.
Fear slammed into my chest, and I scrambled to my feet, forcing my legs to hold even as every instinct screamed at me to run.
"How long have you been there?" I asked, proud that my voice only shook a little.
Lucian tilted his head, the blue glow shifting with the motion. "Long enough."
My fingers curled into fists at my sides, nails biting into my skin. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"You weren't ready to hear it."
That answer slid under my skin and stayed there.
I swallowed hard. "What do you want?"
His gaze swept over me—not leering, not predatory, but in an assessing type of way that somehow made it worse.
"I want you to stop thinking you can undo this," he said simply.
Anger flared in me at his words, burning through my fear just long enough to give me spine. "You think I want to be here?"
"No," he replied calmly. "I think you want to believe there's a version of this where you aren't."
My laugh came out brittle. "Is that supposed to comfort me?"
"No."
He pushed off the wall and took a few slow steps forward, stopping well short of me. Close enough that the glow of his eyes felt warmer. Close enough that my pulse stuttered. He gave me space, not out of kindness, but out of control.
Every part of me calculated the distance to the door.
If I ran,
If I screamed,
If I tried.
"If you strike your head ten thousand times," Lucian said evenly, "fate will still not change the course it laid for you in Hell."
The words hit like a sentence being read aloud.
I lifted my chin, even though my hands trembled. "You talk like this was always meant to happen."
Lucian didn't deny it.
Instead, he asked, "Do you know why humans tell stories about floods?
I frowned. "What?"
"They say the world grew corrupt," he continued, unbothered by my confused expression. "That the flood was punishment. Cleansing. Justice."
He met my eyes.
"But water doesn't rise because it hates the land. It rises because gravity demands it."
My throat went dry, as I did not understand what he was saying. I thought Zephyr was the crazy one, but Lucian proved me wrong, and needs to be in an asylum, immediately.
"What does that have to do with me?"
Lucian studied me for a long moment before proceeding, "There was once a man who borrowed fire from a god."
My pulse quickened.
"He used it to warm his home. To protect his family. To build something lasting." Lucian's voice was smooth, almost conversational. "But fire is not meant to be borrowed. It burns differently in mortal hands."
I shook my head. "I don't understand."
"No," Lucian agreed. "You don't. Yet."
He turned slightly, pacing once, then stopping. "When the god came to reclaim what was taken, the man begged. Promised repayment. Swore that if the debt could not be paid in his lifetime, it would be paid in blood."
My stomach twisted.
"The god accepted," Lucian went on. "Not out of mercy. Out of patience."
My voice trembled. "You're saying I'm - what? A punishment?"
Lucian's gaze snapped back to mine, sharp now. "No."
The single word carried weight.
"You are not punishment," he said quietly. "You are balance."
The room felt smaller.
I hugged myself tighter. "I didn't agree to any of this."
"Of course you didn't," Lucian said. "Children never agree to inherit their parents' graves."
Something inside me cracked.
"So that's it?" I whispered. "I'm just... collateral?"
Lucian considered that. "Collateral implies damage," he said. "You are continuation."
I hated how calm he was and how reasonable he was beginning to sound. How his words wrapped around my fear and gave it structure instead of comfort.
"Why won't anyone just tell me the truth?" I demanded.
Lucian's expression softened, not with pity, but something like restraint. "Because truth is a door," he said. "And some doors, once opened, cannot be closed again."
He took a step back, signaling the end of the conversation.
"For now," he added, "it's enough for you to know this: you were not taken at random. And you were not taken out of cruelty."
I laughed weakly. "That's supposed to help?"
His eyes flared brighter, the blue light cutting through the dark. "No," he said. "It's supposed to stop you from breaking yourself against questions that won't answer back."
He turned toward the exit, placing his hand against the stone.
"Rest," he spoke without looking back. "Storms don't feel dangerous until you're already in the water."
Then he was gone
The silence rushed back in, and was heavier than before.
I sank onto the bed, hands shaking as his words circled around my head without a vivid explanation.
Balance.
Continuation.
Debt.
I stared at the wall until my vision blurred.
Whatever I was... whatever I'd been brought here to be...
It wasn't over.
And somehow, that terrified me more than anything else.