WEIRD THINGS HAPPENING

The night was unnaturally still. Not a breeze stirred the branches outside Evelyn’s bedroom window, and the usual sounds of the forest—crickets, rustling leaves, distant owls—were eerily silent. A heavy weight pressed against her chest, as if the darkness itself had crawled through the cracks of her window and settled atop her like a shroud.

She stared at the ceiling, eyes wide open, too wired to sleep but too afraid to rise. The events of the night before still clung to her skin—every whisper, every forbidden glance, every drop of crimson on his collar.

Lucien.

She shouldn’t even be thinking about him. Not after what she saw. Not after what he told her.

“You don’t know what I am, Evelyn,” he had said, his voice a low rasp that still echoed in her bones. “But you will. Soon.”

Evelyn sat up in bed, gripping her sheets. Her mind kept circling the same questions: What did he mean by that? Why was her blood different? Why did he look at her as if he were starving?

The candle on her bedside table flickered, even though there was no breeze. Her skin erupted in goosebumps. She didn’t believe in ghost stories, not really. But she knew danger. And Lucien was the definition of it.

She had grown up hearing stories of the Ravagers—ancient beings who fed on more than blood. Their touch burned. Their presence altered fate. But those were myths. Warnings. Fairy tales meant to keep girls from wandering too far from the village. Right?

But now... she wasn’t so sure.

A soft thud echoed outside her window. She froze.

Slowly, she tiptoed to the window, heart pounding in her ears. Peering through the glass, she saw only darkness. The moon was a pale sliver, barely lighting the overgrown path between the manor and the woods.

Then, movement.

A shadow emerged from the edge of the trees, tall and fluid, like smoke wrapped in skin. Her breath caught.

Lucien.

He didn’t move like a man. He glided, predatory and silent. And he was looking directly at her window.

Their eyes met through the veil of night.

Her throat tightened. Every instinct screamed at her to run, to scream, to wake the household. But her feet remained rooted to the floor. Her hands clutched the window sill, nails biting into wood.

Lucien raised a hand and placed one finger to his lips. A silent command.

Then he vanished.

Evelyn stumbled back, chest heaving. Her mind raced, but deep down, in a part of her soul she didn’t want to acknowledge, something else stirred—curiosity. Desire. The maddening urge to follow.

She didn’t sleep that night. And by dawn, a decision had settled inside her like a curse: she needed to know the truth. About him. About herself. About the strange mark blooming beneath her collarbone.

A mark that hadn't been there yesterday.

Classes resumed like nothing had happened. The halls of Windgrave Academy buzzed with chatter, exams, and rumors—none of which came close to Evelyn’s reality.

She moved through the corridors like a ghost, replaying every moment of the forest encounter. The red moon. The mark. Lucien’s voice in her head. His eyes still haunted her—eyes too ancient for someone who looked barely older than twenty.

“You look like you saw a ghost,” said Mira, Evelyn’s roommate, nudging her at lunch.

Evelyn forced a laugh. “Just tired.”

Mira shrugged. “Well, get some rest tonight. There’s a blood moon ceremony in the great hall tomorrow. The faculty's pretending it's all for tradition, but I heard something bad always happens when the moon turns red.”

Evelyn flinched at the words. Blood moon. Tradition. Bad things. The timing wasn’t a coincidence.

That night, Evelyn snuck out.

She didn’t know what she expected to find—Lucien waiting in the shadows, or answers scribbled in forgotten books. But her feet carried her to the east wing, to the library where it all began.

Everything was quiet. The chandeliers flickered overhead. Dust floated in shafts of moonlight. Her fingers grazed the spines of old tomes, titles etched in languages long dead. One book called to her—a black leather volume with no title.

She opened it.

Inside were symbols. Runes. Sketches of the mark that now lived on her skin. And a name:

Virel.

The bloodline cursed by fate.

Her breath caught.

There were drawings of rituals, of bonds sealed by blood, of lovers bound and torn apart by destiny. Each page seemed to hum with power, and as she turned them, her mark began to burn.

“You weren’t supposed to find that,” said a voice behind her.

She spun.

Lucien stood between the shelves, shadows clinging to him like a second skin. His eyes burned, not with anger—but with something deeper. Fear.

“What is this?” she demanded, holding up the book.

He stepped forward. “The truth.”

“Tell me.”

He hesitated. Then he said, “The mark means we’re bound. By blood. By fate. If I let you live, it destroys me. If I kill you, it destroys the bond.”

She stared at him. “So either way, one of us dies.”

“No,” he said quietly. “Both.”

The silence between them stretched, thick with unspoken truths.

“What are you really, Lucien?”

He closed the distance between them, lifting her hand and brushing his lips across the mark.

“I’m what fate made me,” he said. “And now it’s made you, too.”

And in that moment, Evelyn understood two things:

One—she was no longer just a girl with questions.

And two—Lucien wasn’t the monster she should fear.

She was.