You are the Key

Isadora:

Darkness hunts me long before I close my eyes.

I feel it as soon as I lie down—like a slow tide, like smoke curling beneath the door. It prowls the edges of my thoughts, velvet-soft and razor-sharp, and for a moment I wonder if sleep is just another trap waiting to spring. But exhaustion is a predator of its own, and it drags me under before I can fight.

The dream is instant.

Black sky. No stars.

The ground beneath me is glassed with ash, shimmering like a frozen lake. I stand barefoot and the heat is alive, searing through the soles of my feet, but I don’t move. The air tastes of iron and something older—something that has been waiting for me.

A hiss, like a thousand whispers braided together.

Isadora…

The voice vibrates inside my bones. I spin, and the world answers with fire. Pillars of it—white at the core, copper at the edges—burst from the ground, drawing sigils in the air. Each mark hovers, molten and trembling, then brands itself across the dark like a living constellation. They are beautiful, terrible, and familiar in a way that makes my heart pitch.

They spell nothing I can read, yet I know them.

The sigils circle me, a slow dance of flame. I feel the heat kiss my skin, but it does not burn; it seeps, claiming, as if I am not a body but a wick. The ground rumbles. A shape moves beyond the fire—tall, thin, a silhouette of shadow so deep it eats the light.

My breath catches.

I cannot see its face, but I feel its gaze—ancient, endless, cold. My instincts scream to run, but my legs root to the ash. The shadow steps closer. The sigils flare, gold bleeding into blood-red.

You are the key, the voice says, each word a knife of heat. You are the door.

I try to speak, but the air scalds my throat.

The shadow lifts a hand. Darkness pours from its palm, coiling toward me like a serpent. I throw my own hands up—reflex, fear—but something inside me answers.

Light.

It surges from my chest, a violent bloom of silver fire. The sigils ignite, brighter, screaming, and the shadow recoils. I feel it then—power, raw and electric, roaring through my veins as if the stars themselves have cracked and spilled into me.

Not this time, I whisper.

The darkness lunges.

I push back.

I wake with a scream caught in my teeth.

Moonlight slices the room into white and black. My heart hammers against my ribs hard enough to bruise. For a second I can’t breathe. Then the smell hits me—ozone, scorched air—and my stomach drops.

My palms burn.

I throw back the blanket.

Sigils crawl across my skin, faintly luminescent, etched from wrist to shoulder like living tattoos. They glow the same molten gold from the dream, their edges smoking with a quiet hiss. The room pulses with their light, shadows bending toward me as if the marks command them.

I bite down on a cry. The heat is real—searing, yet somehow clean. I trace one trembling finger along a spiral on my forearm. The instant I touch it, the symbol flares and vanishes, sinking beneath my skin until nothing remains but a faint warmth.

I sit frozen, heartbeat a frantic metronome. My breath fogs in the cold air.

Not a dream. Not entirely.

I swing my legs to the floor. The wood is icy, grounding, but the energy still hums in me, restless. My reflection in the dark window is a stranger—eyes lit with a pale, unnatural gleam. I feel…different. Stronger. As if the nightmare left a residue, a power I can’t name.

Outside, the Academy sleeps under a shroud of mist. The towers cut the moonlight into shards. Somewhere in that labyrinth of stone, the Royals are awake—I can feel them like phantom heartbeats. Kai’s quicksilver mind searching. Rhett’s feral vigilance pacing the wards. Silas curled in shadow, watching dreams that don’t belong to him. Lucian, a storm of blood and want he pretends to cage.

Their nearness thrums against my senses now, sharp and undeniable. As if the marks have tuned me to them.

I should go to someone. Tell them.

But the memory of the voice—You are the key. You are the door.—curls through me like smoke.

If I tell them, I become a mystery for them to solve. A weapon for them to guard or claim.

No. Not yet.

I stand, every movement electric, and pull on a robe. The night presses against the glass, thick with secrets. I can still taste the dream on my tongue, a bitter-sweetness like charred honey. Whatever stalks me isn’t done. And neither, I realize with a chill that borders on exhilaration, am I.

For the first time since stepping through Ashwyck’s gates, the fear doesn’t drown me.

It waits.

And I am ready to meet it.