Chapter 03: Woke Up Like Hell

Violet’s POV

It started with screams, Sasha’s, the students’, the ones burning, they clawed through the silence, echoing with every hateful word they’d thrown at me… freak, murderer, abomination, I felt blood, fire, skin peeling, my name being screamed in curses and then...nothing.

Until I gasped awake.

I jolted upright with a scream, heart racing, but something yanked me back down and my eyes shot towards my hands. Chains, thick and glowing, iron-forged chains, they pinned my wrists and ankles, heavy and humming with strange energy.

My heart pounded, that burning inside me, it was still there, faint, but present and before I could gather my breath, I looked up and saw them.

People or at least... I thought they were.

Six of them stood around me, quiet and unmoving. Their features were too perfect, skin too smooth, eyes faintly glowing, they looked like statues trying to pretend they were human.

One of them stepped forward, a woman, tall, with flowing silver hair that shimmered like it had a mind of its own, her robe was deep blue, her posture calm, actually it was too calm.

“Finally,” she said. “You’re awake, Miss Violet Black.”

The sound of my name made my stomach drop.

“Who... who are you?” I rasped, my voice hoarse, throat dry. “Why am I chained? What is this place?”

I tried to move again, but the chains refused, the glow tightened around me more and a spike of fear raced through me. Nothing felt real here, nothing felt safe.

Was I dreaming?

Was I dead?

Had I actually died back there, burnt the school to hell and ended up where I belonged?

My chest clenched. “Am I… am I in Hell?”

The woman didn’t answer that. Instead, she spoke again, tone still calm. “I am Seraphina and you are being held under containment.”

“Containment?” I repeated. “Like… prison? Was... was I arrested? I didn’t meant to hurt anyone, I had no idea what happened ”

No one moved, they all stared at me like I'm some shit and I swallowed hard.

“No,” I muttered, shaking my head slowly. “No, this isn’t right. I really didn’t mean to..." My voice cracked, too brittle to hold up any longer. “I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

Seraphina didn’t even blink, her expression stayed still, disturbingly composed, as if she'd heard the same plea a thousand times and never once believed it.

“You are currently in Avenmoor Academy.”

I blinked. “Academy?”

The word hit weird, and I felt too ordinary for a place like this. I glanced around, eyes trailing over the pulsing red and white walls, the swirling, ancient-looking symbols glowing like they were alive and watching me. Chains buzzed with faint energy under my skin, it didn’t smell like bleach or medicine or even metal. It smelled like… power and strangeness.

“This isn’t a school,” I whispered. “What kind of academy chains people to the floor?”

She didn’t bother answering that, of course not.

“Let’s not waste time,” she said coolly. “You’re far from home, Violet Black and you won’t be returning, this will be your home now.”

I froze, every nerve in my body suddenly too aware of the weight of those chains. “Excuse me?”

“You won’t be going back,” she repeated, her voice so calm that it made my stomach twist.

“You don’t get to decide that,” I snapped, panic slicing through my words before I could stop it. “I want to go home. I have a family and… and I think I hurt my sister. I have to visit the hospital. I didn’t mean...You can’t just… just take me and claim I belong here...”

“You were not taken,” she interrupted. “You were rescued.”

Rescued? My mouth opened but no sound came out. What the hell kind of rescue leaves you chained up like a rabid animal? Drenched in guilt, half-fried nerves, and surrounded by people who looked like their eyes glowed in the dark?

This didn’t feel like a rescue, it felt like a trap, a cage, a pretty one, maybe, but still a cage.

“I don’t need rescuing,” I hissed. “I need answers and I need to go...”

“Untie me,” I snapped louder, heart pounding now. “Untie me this instant, I’m going home.”

Still, Seraphina didn’t flinch, she merely raised a hand, and one of the strangers, tall, slender, with eyes that flickered silver stepped forward and handed her what looked like a floating, sleek metallic tablet. She swiped her finger across the surface, turned it to face me, and said in that same dispassionate voice, “Watch this, Violet. And tell me again if that’s the home you still want.”

I wanted to refuse, out of sheer defiance, but the moment the screen glowed to life, I couldn’t look away.

It started slow.

Footage of me in the school hallway, my hands trembling, my body lit with that strange, sickening glow. The moment my scream tore through the air. The eruption, burning students and police. Liam’s body on the floor, a collapsed building, my body crackling with unholy energy, people pointing, crying, and screaming.

Then came the news reports, dozens of them.

“Freak accident leaves school in ruins.”

“Explosion killed eight students, three police officers, leaving several injured. The suspect was identified as Violet Black.”

My face plastered across every screen.

Photos, snapshots, security footage of my eyes glowing, mouth open mid-scream. Screencaps zoomed in and slowed down, dissecting every frame like I was some exotic monster. My full name was on everything, headlines, hashtags, protest signs. One video showed a group of angry people gathered in front of the hospital, holding up pictures of the dead, chanting for justice.

Justice from me.

The last video made me flinch. Protesters holding signs. One read: MONSTERS DON’T DESERVE MERCY.

Another had my face with KILL HER scrawled across it in red.

Tears blurred my eyes.

“How... how did it get this bad?” I whispered. “It was less than an hour… I didn’t mean...”

“You lost control,” Seraphina said, her tone neutral. “And the world responded.”

I stared at the tablet long after the screen faded, unable to process how my life had shattered into ash and headlines so soon. My own face, flickering through death tolls, news crawlers, and hashtags that called for my arrest. Monster and killer. Abomination. My name had gone viral like a curse no one wanted to touch.

I tried to breathe, but the chains jerked with every movement, tightening until they bit into my skin. The more I shifted, the harsher they clamped down, like they were alive and punishing me for existing. My chest rose and fell rapidly, my throat burned and my mind wouldn’t stop racing. How did everything go so wrong?

Flashes of my “perfect” life tore through my head...if you could even call it that. My drunk father’s bloodshot eyes as he got dragged by cops for stealing silly shit. My sister Sasha’s disgusted stares, her venom-laced words, the endless nights she didn’t come home. Then her scream, her face blistering from flames I couldn’t stop. The way she looked at me, like I was a monster.

I let out a broken sob and crumpled, my chains rattling against the ground. “I didn’t ask for this,” I choked out, “I didn’t want this…”

Seraphina stepped closer, her expression still blank.

“You have two choices,” she said, her voice flat. “Return to your world and face life imprisonment… or death. Or worse, become a lab rat, dissected by human scientists who’ll carve you open just to understand what you are.”

I blinked up at her. “What?”

“Or stay in Avenmoor,” she continued coldly, “Train. Control your power. Become one of us, one of our elite to protect our kind.”

My hands balled into fists against the stone, my voice rose, crackling, “Why do I have power in the first place?! Why would I be cursed with this? What the hell did I do to deserve it?! I didn’t sign up for this...any of this!”

The air around me shifted, pulse vibrated from deep inside my bones, and before I could stop it, the floor trembled.

The same humming pressure I felt at school returned, building in my gut, sparks of glowing energy licking along my skin, my chains reacting immediately, glowing hot and taut, struggling to hold me down.

“Calm yourself,” Seraphina warned. “You’re triggering it again.”

But I was already gone. “I just want to see my sister!” I cried, tears spilling freely now. “She was hurt because of me...I have to know if she’s alive, please!”

Seraphina’s face twisted in something like fury. “You fool. She’s the reason you lost control the girl who hated you, mocked you. Was it not her voice that screamed first, turned others against you? That’s the sister you beg for?”

I shrank back as her words sliced into me, cruel but… painfully true. Sasha never loved me, not really. I was the burden, the weird one, the charity case she never wanted to be tied to.

“I don’t care,” I whispered. “She’s my sister.”

“You’re not human,” she said then, “Not fully, the tests confirmed it. There’s werewolf blood in your veins and something older… something ancient… sleeping beneath your skin, waking it could doom us all.”

My breath caught because I didn’t understand anything.

“You carry a dormant power that hasn’t been seen in centuries,” she continued. “We don’t know what will happen if it fully awakens but the Academy has made its decision, you will remain here, this is your new reality, Violet Black, you are ours now.”

My entire body locked up.

The hell I am.

“No,” I breathed. “No, no, no, I don’t even know what this place is! I don’t know you. I don’t belong here! You don’t own me!”

The ground beneath me cracked, the chains glowed white-hot, whiplashing as energy burst from my body, the walls flickered, symbols flashing and everyone stepped back in alarm.

“She’s destabilizing again!” someone shouted.

“She’s going to snap the bindings...!”

My chest heaved as panic swallowed me whole. Going back meant death... cold steel bars, needles, men in lab coats calling me “specimen.” I wasn’t even human anymore, not to them, not to my friends. But staying here? In this strange place where they watched me like I was some ticking bomb? That was just a prettier prison, one wrapped in secrets and glowing chains.

“I want to go home!” I shouted, fighting the burn crawling under my skin. “Let me go!”

“Violet, stop this!” Seraphina snapped, but I didn’t care. “If you don’t control it, the consequences...”

“What consequences?” I screamed. “I already lost everything!”

Cracks began to form along the chains holding me, one of the men stepped back, hand twitching towards a weapon.

“Call him,” Seraphina barked. “Now. Summon Riven.”

But I couldn’t stop,I just wanted out, out of this place, out of this body, out of this cursed mess I never asked for. I thrashed, and the metal groaned, my breathing was ragged, tears mixing with sweat as my powers roared but suddenly, the air shifted and the door creaked open slowly, and something inside me... stopped.

Like my soul hit a wall.

My body went stiff, my breath caught mid-sob, every muscle in me locked up, the fire inside me paused, not gone, just... frozen, held in suspense by something older than language and then I looked up.

A man walked in, tall, dark, and calm, his presence didn’t just fill the room, it devoured it and his eyes... Those eyes weren’t human, they were molten silver with bleeding crimson rings, locked straight on me.

He stopped and stared.

My lips parted, but no sound came out.

Something deep in my gut twisted, not in fear or quite, it was something far stranger and darker, a pull, like the part of me I couldn’t name, had recognized him before I even did.

“Riven,” Seraphina said beside me, voice low and urgent. “Contain her before she explodes again.”

But he didn’t move right away.

He just looked at me like he’d seen a ghost or something sacred or maybe both.

Then... he walked.

Slow, intentional, each step towards me felt like it echoed in my bones. My powers didn’t flare, they quieted, curled inward like a scolded child, my panic faded into confusion, everything about him screamed danger, yet something inside me leaned in.

He knelt in front of me, eyes never leaving mine, then lowly, deliberately, his hand rose, fingers brushing my cheek with a reverence that felt entirely wrong. Then, gently, but possessively, he reached out, tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear, and brought some strands to his nose.

He breathed me in, and I didn’t move, I couldn’t.

Then his fingers wrapped around my jaw, not harsh... but firm and controlling, forcing my chin upward until his burning silver-red eyes devoured mine.

His voice dropped, rough and intimate,

“Mine,” he breathed, the word tasting like a vow and a warning all at once. “I’ve bled through realms for the scent of you… Mate.”