"For there is nothing hidden that will not be
disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the
open."
— Luke 8:17
South Bank, London — 10:48 PM
Luciel hated parties.
Too loud, too crowded, too drenched in desperation masquerading as fun.
He stood across the street from the event — an off-campus gathering in a converted Victorian manor, now soaked in neon lights,
bad remixes, and the perfume-clouds of sweaty twenty-somethings. A banner hung
skewed over the gate:
HIST-FOLK NIGHT: MYTH, MASKS & MAYHEM.
He sighed through his teeth.
"Of course," he muttered, adjusting the collar of his coat. "Let the children play with ghosts."
A talisman slipped between his fingers — thin
parchment pressed with copper ink.
He whispered the activation verse:
"Hide me beneath Thy wings.
Let no eye know me, save Thine."
— Miracle of Veiled Intention
It flared, then vanished into the lining of his coat.
With that, Luciel crossed the street and slipped past the distracted bouncer. The moment he stepped through the doorway, the air changed.
He felt it.
Threads.
Like harp strings pulled taut.
They didn't point to one place — not yet — but someone. Someone inside was humming with fate. The same karmic tension he'd traced through blood-soaked altars and desecrated shrines… now pulsing in rhythm with strobe lights and student laughter.
The music grated.
He walked slowly through the hall — past masked students and faux witches. Someone mistook him for a professor. Another tried to offer him a drink. He ignored them all.
In the corner, he saw her.
Not clearly. Not yet.
Just the outline of a young woman in a black long-sleeve and dark jeans. Laughing — or pretending to. Her aura flickered like a glitch in his vision.
Thalia.
But he didn't know her name. Not yet.
Just that the karmic threads around her shimmered violently, as though the universe couldn't decide if she should be seen or forgotten.
He didn't approach.
Didn't dare.
Instead, Luciel turned and took up a position near the bookshelf-lined study at the edge of the manor, slipping a Talisman: miracle of Still Light onto the window latch. It masked presence from spiritual detection.
Then he waited.
Watched.
Something was about to happen.
He could feel it. The same way storms trembled in the bones of old priests.
⸻
Party Interior — Midnight
Laughter. Voices. Music.
But beneath it — deeper than the bassline —
something stirred.
Luciel's fingers brushed over his rosary ring. Fate Weave pulsed softly.
Then—
A glimmer.
A flicker across the crowd. A presence he couldn't place. Too perfect. Too still.
His heart skipped once.
It wasn't Thalia.
This was something else. A ripple in the thread. Watching. Waiting.
He scanned the crowd.
Nothing.
Gone.
Just like before.
The same impossibility he'd encountered in the underground. No karma. No signature. A spiritual blank slate walking like a
ghost through creation.
Luciel's breath slowed. He reached for another talisman — a miracle older than the others. Drawn with ink made from soot and blood.
Talisman: Miracle of Remiel's Sight — "Let the unseen be known, and the known be judged."
He didn't activate it. Not yet.
But he kept it close.
The moment wasn't right.
Not yet.
He let the rhythm of the crowd cover him like fog.
And in the distance, he felt it again.
Her.
The girl.
The humming thread.
Thalia.
⸻
Luciel stepped deeper into the party — not to
mingle, not to act.
Just to wait. Watch. Follow.
And already, the thread was pulling tighter.
Tomorrow, it would begin.
Tonight, he would simply be the shadow in the corner — cigarette unlit, questions unanswered.
But soon?
He would find the answer behind her eyes.
And maybe, just maybe…
She'd find something behind his, too.
⸻
A figure watched from across the courtyard — the same stone path where Thalia and Caleb had stood minutes before. A gust stirred the oak leaves around his feet. The illusion of his face flickered faintly, only
noticeable to those trained to catch glitches in a glamour.
He looked every bit the tenured professor: leather elbow patches, horn-rimmed glasses, and a stack of neatly marked essays under one arm. But his eyes — they did not belong to the body he wore.
He stepped into the shadow of the east hall, tapping an ancient sigil etched into his ring.
Message delivered.
His vision shimmered slightly, like heat rising from stone, and then the voice came — not aloud, but threaded into his mind like coiling silk.
"Did she respond?"
The figure's lip twitched.
"Not in words. But her soul remembered. The dream stirred. It always does when one so marked hears the old truth."
He looked down at the old-fashioned flip phone in his hand. The text he'd sent still glowed faintly.
"Do you remember what you were born carrying?"
He snapped the phone shut.
"The anomaly is waking."
There was a pause on the other end of the connection — long and cold.
"Then we must act before the dream becomes memory."
The figure's fingers flexed. Beneath the skin of the borrowed form, something ancient stirred.
"And what of the Nephilim?" the voice asked.
The figure's smile didn't reach his eyes.
"He's too close already. If he connects the threads before she remembers… it will all unravel."
He exhaled slowly, the air tasting faintly of sulfur.
"Keep him distracted. Misdirect his path. Delay him by any means necessary."
He turned, disappearing into the staff wing of the university.
None of the students noticed. They never did.
After all… he'd worn this face for years.
And not one of them remembered his name.
⸻
Thalia
The music was too loud.
Even from outside the estate's garden, she could feel the thrum of the bass crawling across her skin like static. Jazz had practically shoved her through the front gate with a, "No sulking. Go socialize — or at least steal snacks like a functioning introvert."
Thalia hadn't replied. Not because she disagreed — but because something had shifted inside her since morning. Like her bones had overheard a secret her brain wasn't ready to understand.
She'd hoped the noise, the people, the champagne flutes clinking against plastic, might drown it out.
It didn't.
Instead, her vision blurred… not from exhaustion, not from nerves, but from something deeper, older.
The backyard swam in and out of focus.
And then — it wasn't the party she was standing in.
It was a stone courtyard soaked in blood.
Screaming.
Smoke.
The air thick with fire and incense.
She was smaller — not in spirit, but in body — eyes blinking up at the red moon above, her tiny hands clutching something impossibly sharp. A dagger, blackened and ancient, older than the language of the people who died around her.
Men in robes had fallen. Women too. One child — herself, maybe? No… not her. A girl she didn't know, but remembered with impossible clarity — stood silent in the eye of the carnage, blade in hand, cradling it like a newborn.
She wasn't crying.
She was waiting.
Waiting for someone to come take the curse from her hands.
Waiting to be killed.
To be freed.
But no one did.
Not then.
Thalia gasped.
The party came crashing back — sound, color, motion. Someone was laughing too close to her ear. Caleb's voice called out across the garden. Jazz waved near the bar, drink in hand.
But Thalia couldn't move.
The memory wasn't hers.
But it was.
She could still feel the blood on her palms.
Still see the blade.
Still feel the girl's silence — like a scream trapped in stone.