CHAPTER 3: DENIAL

Everything seems to be going too fast and I can't handle it.

"Get out," I say, my voice low but trembling with emotion.

Maddox just stands there, staring at me with those strange eyes that have now returned to normal—or what passes for normal. Human-looking. The revelation, his warnings, the journal, my supposed "unique" heritage—it's all too much, too sudden.

"Lena, you need to listen—"

"I don't know what games you all are playing at, but I don't want any part of it," I cut him off, anger bubbling up from somewhere deep inside me. "Get out and leave me alone. NOW!"

Something shifts with the last word. The air between us seems to compress and then expand outward from me like a shockwave. It's subtle—no Hollywood special effects, no furniture flying across the room—but I feel it. And judging by the way Maddox staggers back a step, his eyes widening in surprise, he feels it too.

It almost seemed to hit him like a punch, and this time he doesn't hesitate. The pain is clear on his face as he turns away, glancing back at me one last time before leaving.

As the door clicks shut behind him, I sink to the floor, my back against the wall, knees pulled up to my chest. My hands are shaking. What the hell was that? Did I do that? Did I imagine it?

This has to be a joke, I tell myself. Some elaborate prank. Maybe my parents were involved in some weird cult, and now Professor Winters and Maddox are trying to recruit me. That would make more sense than... than being some sort of supernatural being with powers I don't understand.

I push away all the thoughts of the journal and the events of today. I'm sleep-deprived, obviously. Let me get some sleep and put this all in a bad day and leave it there.

I drag myself to bed without bothering to change clothes or even take off my shoes. Exhaustion hits me like a physical weight, and I'm asleep almost instantly.

---

What I don't know is that the shift I felt, he knew what it was.

Maddox walks quickly across campus, his face still stinging from the invisible force of Lena's command. His phone is already in his hand, Winters' number dialed.

"She used it," he says the moment Winters answers. "Voice command. Pushed me right out of her apartment."

There's a pause on the other end of the line. "Already? The journal must have accelerated things. Her powers shouldn't be manifesting this quickly."

"Well, they are," Maddox replies, ducking into an empty classroom to avoid being overheard. "And they're strong, sir. Really strong. Even untrained, uncontrolled—it felt like getting hit by a truck when she told me to leave."

"Where is she now?"

"Still in her apartment. I think she's in denial, trying to convince herself none of this is real."

Another pause, longer this time. Maddox can almost hear the professor thinking.

"We need to move faster than planned," Winters finally says. "They'll have felt that. Every sensitive within a mile radius probably felt the surge. We may have days, maybe only hours before they find her."

"What do you want me to do?" Maddox asks, already knowing he won't like the answer.

"Watch her. Don't approach again until I say so—she's clearly not ready to trust us. I'll make some calls, see if we can arrange extraction sooner than planned."

Maddox frowns, leaning against a desk. "She has no idea what she is. I promise, she has no idea what she is. I'm sorry, but please understand, when she commanded 'get out, now'—there was no resisting it."

"Voice of command. Just like her father," Winters says softly. "The legends said the bloodlines would merge this way eventually. I just never thought I'd live to see it."

"What exactly is she, Professor? You've never been entirely clear on that point."

There's a long silence before Winters answers. "Something new, Maddox. Something both sides fear because they can't control it. And unfortunately for Lena, something both sides would rather destroy than try to understand."

---

My dreams are vivid, unsettling.

I'm standing in a forest clearing, moonlight so bright it turns everything silver. There are figures around me, dozens of them, just beyond the tree line. I can feel their eyes on me, but can't make out their faces.

"Show yourself," a voice calls from the darkness. "Show your true form."

I look down at my hands, and they're glowing from within, light pulsing beneath my skin in time with my heartbeat.

"I don't know how," I try to say, but no sound comes out.

A woman steps forward from the shadows, her face obscured by a hood, but I can see the curve of a smile.

"The daughter of diplomats," she says, her voice somehow familiar and strange at once. "The child of two worlds. The marked one."

She reaches toward me, palm up, revealing a crescent-shaped scar on her wrist that seems to shimmer in the moonlight.

"It's time to remember who you are, Lena."

When her fingers touch my forehead, pain explodes behind my eyes, and I feel something tearing inside me—like a veil being ripped away.

I wake up gasping, my body drenched in sweat despite the cool air of my apartment. The digital clock by my bed reads 3:17 AM. I've only been asleep for a few hours, but I feel different. Changed.

My skin itches all over, like I've outgrown it somehow. The sensation is maddening, making me want to claw at myself. I stumble to the bathroom, flipping on the harsh fluorescent light.

The face that stares back at me from the mirror is mine, but not quite. My eyes—they're different. Around the pupils, flecks of silver dance like tiny stars caught in the brown of my irises. I blink hard, rub my eyes, look again.

The silver flecks remain.

I turn, lifting my shirt to examine my back in the mirror. There, at the base of my spine, a shape is forming on my skin—a perfect crescent, like a new moon, faintly luminous in the bathroom's dim light.

The mark from my mother's journal. The one that was supposedly hidden by a glamour all these years.

"No," I whisper, pressing my fingers to the mark. It's warm to the touch, pulsing gently like a second heartbeat. "This isn't happening."

But it is happening. Whatever I am, whatever I've been all along beneath the surface, it's waking up. And from what Maddox said, that means I'm in danger.

I wrap my arms around myself, sliding down to sit on the cold tile floor. Part of me still wants to deny everything, to crawl back into bed and pretend this is all just an elaborate nightmare. But I know, deep down, that there's no going back to the life I had before Professor Winters handed me that journal.

For better or worse, I'm changing. And I need to understand what I'm becoming before it's too late.