CHAPTER TWO

They called it "The Illumina Exhibit."

A final showcase for graduating artists at Hallowind College. Each year, the best students were chosen to present a single piece—one last chance to display their brightest and most beautiful work. The kind that attracted patrons, agents, gallery owners, and sometimes, fame.

The catch?

No names. Just art.

Each painting stood on its own, anonymous and raw. no titles, no signatures on the front. Just a single identifying mark—your chosen symbol—etched quietly onto the back. A tradition meant to let talent speak louder than legacy.

It was supposed to be fair. Clean. Safe.

But nothing about my painting felt safe.

---

“Let me guess,” Lila said as she leaned over, peering at the corner of my canvas. “You didn’t do the sparkly meadow assignment, did you?”

We were tucked in the back of Studio 5, the scent of oil and paint clinging to the air. Paintbrushes cluttered our workspaces. Half-finished pieces leaned against the walls like silent witnesses.

“I tried,” I muttered, wiping my hands on a rag. “But then my brain hijacked the canvas.”

Lila tilted her head and whistled low

“Holy hell.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Girl. What is this? This isn’t like your other work.

“Arabella…” Lila said slowly. “This one feels... intense.”

Babe, it looks like your soul called a séance.”

She wasn’t wrong.

The painting wasn’t light. It wasn’t beautiful in the conventional sense. It was…

"A circle of roses, bleeding.

A silver crown pierced by thorns.

A pair of red, slitted eyes above a mouth full of fangs.

And in the center—

A girl.

Barefoot. Pale.

Hands outstretched. Eyes wide. Offering."

It had spilled out of me in a trance at home. I didn’t remember sketching it. Didn’t even choose the colors. My brush had moved like it remembered something I didn’t.

“You sure you’re okay?” Lila asked, her voice softer now. “This isn’t just dark, Bella. It’s… haunting.”

I stared at the girl in the painting, offering herself to a figure crowned and cruel. “I didn’t mean to make it.”

Lila studied me for a moment. “You always say that about your best work.”

I let out a shaky breath and picked up my brush again. There was one thing left to do.

“Not signing it?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No AV. Not this time.”

“Then how will they know it’s you?”

“They won’t,” I said quietly. “That’s the point.”

And with a flick of black paint, I marked the back of the canvas with a symbol I’d never drawn before. A sharp, swirling rune—curved like a crescent blade split down the middle by a jagged line. My hand moved like it had traced it a hundred times before.

“What the hell is that?” Lila asked.

“I… I don’t know.”

It felt older than the room around us. Like, it didn’t belong to this world.

Lila gave a half-laugh, half-shiver. “Creepy. But weirdly cool. I vote you enter it.”

“I already submitted it.”

“You what?!”

“I turned it in an hour ago.”

“Bella!”

too late now.

---

The night of the exhibit came so fast .

The College’s main hall was unrecognizable—soft music floated from a live string quartet, chandeliers bathed everything in a warm, golden glow. Staff moved through the crowd with flutes of champagne. Marble floors reflected the lights like liquid stars.

Each painting stood beneath spotlights, framed in glass. No names. Just numbered plaques and hushed awe.

Lila looked ethereal in her wine-red dress and combat boots. I felt like a shadow beside her, cloaked in black silk and nerves.

“Number 27,” she said. “Yours. It’s already got three bids.”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t stop staring at it.

The girl. The crown. The blood.

It didn’t belong here.

And then… they walked in.

Three men. Not students. Not faculty.

Strangers.

One was pale as frost, with silver hair slicked back and a navy suit tailored to cruelty. The second had black curls, loose around his shoulders, with a half-lidded gaze that screamed danger. The last moved with a cane, but his posture said he didn’t need it—he just liked the authority it gave him.

They weren’t looking at the art the way others did.

They were searching.

Their eyes swept the room like weapons.

And then they stopped.

At mine.

Number 27.

The man with the cane leaned forward, squinting. The silver-haired one cocked his head, lips parting slightly as if the image stirred some long-forgotten echo inside him.

The third man stepped closer, his mouth curling into something that was definitely not a smile.

Then, in a language I didn’t know—but somehow felt—the elder spoke:

> “Verasha kai. En'dariel nuvess.”

[“It’s her. She remembers.”]

I couldn’t hear them. But I saw how the host paled when they handed her an envelope.

They bought it.

Full price. No questions.

And still… they didn’t leave.

---

*Elsewhere, that same night…>>>

———

A private lounge. Lights dimmed. The painting’s image projected on a tablet, glowing softly as the three men circled it.

“It’s the Offering,” said the one with curls, pacing. “She painted the scene. Our scene.”

“She remembers,” one of them said quietly.

“Or she dreams,” the second replied, swirling a dark liquid in his glass. “Either way, the image is forbidden.”

She signed it,” the third said, tapping the corner of the canvas. “That rune—it’s not decorative. It’s ancestral.”

“Valreth os. Dareth'al nox vi’rellen.”

[“A mistake,” said the elder. “It should have never surfaced.”]

> “Kareth vossar. En’serath vi’daruun.”

[“The bloodlines were buried. This mark was sealed.”]

“Well,” said the one with silver hair. “Clearly not deep enough.”

“The rune matches the old blood seals,” the silver-haired one muttered, pouring a deep red liquid into a crystal glass.

A long silence passed.

>"Ella es humana. No debería saber nada de esto.

[“She’s human. She shouldn’t know any of this.”]

“She couldn’t have known. Not unless…”

“She’s related,” the elder finished. “Connected. Perhaps to the fallen lineage.”

“She’s a threat.”

“Or worse.” The elder touched the printed photo of the painting. His finger hovered over the girl in the center. “She’s a key.”

“Then what do we do?”

“We find her,” the elder said. “And destroy whatever memories she’s awakened.”

“If she remembers more—”

“She won’t.”

---

I didn’t sleep that night.

My room was too still. My hands still tingled from the brushstrokes. And the symbol—the rune—kept glowing in my mind like it had burned itself into my bones.

I didn’t know what it meant.

But I felt it watching me.

And for reasons I couldn’t explain, I locked my windows.

---

They came for me two nights later.

But I wasn’t home.

---

My brother had gone to school early for practice.

I stayed late at the school studio that day.

The only ones home were my parents.

I found them the next morning.

Blood on the floor. Silence in the air. The smell of something wrong.

They didn’t just kill them.

They hunted them.

And I never understood why.

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