I run my hands through my hair and pace between stacks of kegs, trying to understand what is happening to me. Am I unraveling? Is someone messing with my memory? With me?
After a minute, I push back through the door, plaster on a smile, and start checking the register. I reach for the bar mat and lift it to clean underneath…and freeze.
A folded note sits tucked under the mat. Crisp white paper folded perfectly. I look around, but no one’s watching. My fingers shake slightly as I open it.
No signature. No mark.
With just a single sentence, suddenly it’s not just paranoia anymore. It’s proof. Someone’s been here and they know, and they want me to know it. I fold the note again, tighter this time, and shove it deep into my back pocket like I can crush the words that way. They still echo in my skull.
“He wasn’t the only one watching.”
7
And Then There Was Fire
The note is still in my pocket when I spot him in the VIP section. Back corner. Riven fucking Vescari. He’s alone. Of course he is. He sits like a king in exile. All tailored black and bone-deep stillness, one hand wrapped around a lowball glass, the other draped over the armrest like this place belongs to him.Like I do.
It’s not me he's watching, for once. His eyes are fixed on someone else. A guy, early twenties, maybe. Lanky frame, hollow eyes, hoodie two sizes too big. He’s pacing near the pool table, clenching his fists like he’s psyching himself up to do something stupid.
The bar hums around us, unaware. Unbothered. Like no one else can feel the danger pressing down through the air like gravity. I stare at Riven.
He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t even blink, but I move anyway. Across the floor. Past the regulars. Straight intothe eye of the storm. I slide into the booth beside him, not across from him. Right next to him, like I’m daring him to react. To lie. To pretend this isn’t what he’s been angling for since the beginning.
“Stalking’s a bold move for someone who claims not to pull strings,” I say, low and sharp. His gaze doesn’t shift. Not even a millimeter. Still locked on the guy with the hoodie. “He isn’t going to do it,” Riven murmurs. I blink, “What?” He lifts his glass, sips. “The knife’s in his jacket. Sewn into the lining.” My stomach flips. “How do you know that?”
He finally turns to me, just slightly. Enough to catch the full weight of those eyes. “I know a lot of things I’m not supposed to.” His hand moves. Slow…intentional. He takes my hand, the one clenched in my lap, and gently rests it on his thigh. Anchoring. I should pull away, but I don’t. “He came in planning to stab someone,” Riven says. “He doesn’t even know who yet. He just wants to hurt.” The words lodge in my chest like a shard of glass. “Then stop him,” I plead.
“I already did.”
The guy with the hoodie stumbles mid-step. He looks up, right at us. His shoulders tense, like something in him buckles. He shifts direction, veering for the door instead of the bar. “Don’t look away,” Riven says. So, of course I do. My hands shake as the world breaks open. The light goes cold, sounds warp and stretch...suddenly I see it. The man in the hoodie, lunging at a stranger, knife flashing in his hand, blood blooming across someone’s chest. People are screaming, glass is shattering, and a body hits the floor.
Silence.
It’s like the rewinding of a film. The image collapses on itself. The color returns. The sound resets.
The man is just…walking out. Calm. Hands in his pockets. The blade was never drawn. I blink hard. My breath is ragged. “What in the actual fuck was that?” Riven doesn’t answer. Because he doesn’t need to. To anyone watching, we didn’t speak. We didn’t move. We didn’t do anything. I slide my hand out from under his, stand up, and walk away. Every step feels like a lie I’m telling my body, pretending I still understand gravity, time, reality. Pretending I didn’t just see something that hasn’t happened. Something that should’ve?
I don’t look back. I feel him watching. And somehow, that’s worse.
The back alley is quiet, slick with rain and shadow. I step into it like it might offer answers, but all it gives me is space to shake. My hands won’t stop. Neither will the memory. It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t a daydream. It wasn’t mine. The man. The knife. The blood.
It felt too real. Too sharp. Like I could reach into it and come back with someone else’s trauma under my nails. I lean against the brick wall, forehead pressed to stone, breathing like I just ran ten miles uphill with a collapsed lung. This is bad, really bad.
The note said I was being watched. Riven’s been inside my head. And now the fucking future is bleeding through my brain like a cracked pipe. My fingers dig into my thighs. I focus on the pressure, on the pain, on anything that keeps me here. You’re not broken. You’re just…God, what? Awakening? Haunted? Losing your goddamn mind?
I sink down onto an overturned milk crate behind the bar’s dumpster. The scent of rot and old grease wraps around me like a second skin, but I don’t care. I’ve seen people stabbed before, in documentaries, on news clips, through glassy screens. It never felt like this. Never smelled like copper and panic. Never made me feel like I was holding the knife too. What did he do to me?
I replay it in my mind again. His hand on mine. His voice in my ear.“Don’t look away.” “Not a request. A command.”Riven Vescari gives commandments like scripture; low, sharp, and unshakable. I broke it without hesitation. He told me not to look away. So, I did, and the vision cracked open like a bone split clean down the center. I disobeyed, and something answered.
I pull my phone out of my jacket. The screen lights up. No missed calls. No new messages. My wallpaper’s changed. It’s not the default. It’s not anything I remember setting. It’s a photo of a symbol. The same one from the sketches. The same one from the vision. It’s faint, almost like a watermark.
Fucking. Hell.
I drop the phone on the ground like it bit me.
This is spiraling too fast. I need answers. I need air. I need…“Lux?” The door creaks open behind me. It’s Benny. Concern knitted into his eyebrows, a towel slung over one shoulder, and an apron wet from dishes. “You okay?” he asks.
I nod too fast. “Yeah, just needed a breather.”
