(Aria's POV)
The knife twisted in my chest, and I gasped...
"Aria?" Thomas's voice cut through the darkness. "Honey, you're dreaming again."
I bolted upright, sheets soaked with sweat, heart hammering against my ribs. The phantom pain in my chest faded, but the memory of steel piercing flesh lingered. In the dream, I'd been the one holding the blade.
"Third time this week," Thomas said softly from the doorway. He held a steaming mug—chamomile tea, my favorite. "Want to talk about it?"
I shook my head, accepting the warmth between my palms. "Same nightmare. Can't remember the details." The lie came easily, but Thomas's concerned expression told me he wasn't buying it.
"These started after your emergency session Monday night, didn't they?"
Monday. When those dark eyes had stared at me. When that stranger had pulled a knife.
"I'm fine, Thomas. Just stress from work."
"Stress doesn't make you duck imaginary attacks in your sleep."
I looked up sharply. "What?"
"You were moving, blocking something. Your arms..." He demonstrated, showing defensive positions I didn't remember making. "Where did you learn to fight like that?"
"I don't know how to fight." But even as I said it, my hands had automatically shifted to a ready position. I forced them to relax around the mug. "I took a self-defense class in college. Muscle memory."
Thomas sat on the edge of my bed, his weathered face creased with worry. "Aria, I've worked with trauma survivors for forty years. I know what repressed memories look like when they start surfacing."
"I don't have repressed memories. I have amnesia. There's a difference."
"Is there?" He reached out, smoothing my hair back the way he'd done countless times over the past five years. "You were found in an alley with a head injury. No ID, no memory of anything before that night. The doctors said it was likely traumatic amnesia—your mind protecting you from something too painful to remember."
"Thomas..."
"What if it's not protecting you anymore?"
I pulled away from his touch, suddenly restless. "I need to get ready for work."
"It's 5 AM."
"I have an early session." Another lie. I just needed him to leave, needed space to think. To breathe. To figure out why I kept seeing flashes of a woman with silver hair and cold eyes teaching me to kill.
Thomas sighed but stood. "I'm making breakfast. Try to eat something."
After he left, I stumbled to the bathroom and stared at my reflection. Pale skin, dark circles under brown eyes, hands that trembled slightly as I reached for my toothbrush. Normal. Human. Nothing like the woman in my dreams who moved through shadows.
I splashed cold water on my face, but the chill only brought back another flash, being chained, icy metal against my skin, someone chanting in a language I shouldn't understand but somehow did.
"Stop it," I whispered to my reflection. "You're a counselor. You help people heal from trauma. You don't... you don't know how to hurt them."
But my reflection stared back with eyes that suddenly seemed familiar. Eyes that had seen too much. Done too much.
By nine AM, I was in my office, trying to focus on case notes. My first client wasn't until ten, but I needed the routine. Needed to ground myself in this life, this identity I'd built from nothing.
"Knock, knock." Sarah, my colleague, poked her head in. "You look like hell."
"Thanks."
"Seriously, are you okay? You seem... different lately. More on edge."
I forced a smile. "Just tired. Bad dreams."
"Maybe you should take your own advice and talk to someone about it."
"I'm fine."
Sarah's expression softened. "The healer who won't heal herself. Classic." She stepped into my office, closing the door behind her. "Look, I know you've been dealing with some tough cases lately. That emergency session Monday..."
"What about it?"
"Security footage shows a man leaving through your window. At the third floor." She raised an eyebrow. "Either he's part spider, or something happened that you're not telling anyone."
My blood went cold. "He was... upset. Agitated. He left through the door."
"Aria, I saw the footage. He went out the window like it was nothing. Like he'd done it before." She leaned forward. "What aren't you telling me?"
"Nothing. I..." The room suddenly felt too small, too bright. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel sweat beading on my forehead. "I need some air."
"Aria..."
I pushed past her, ignoring her concerned calls. The hallway stretched endlessly in both directions, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like angry wasps. My breath came in short gasps. The walls were closing in, just like in that basement, chained while someone tried to tear apart my mind—
"Breathe." I pressed my back against the wall, sliding down until I sat on the floor. "Just breathe."
But I couldn't. Because suddenly I was somewhere else, somewhere dark and cold, with the taste of blood in my mouth and shadows wrapping around me like living things. I was moving through a house, silent as death, and there was a man in a study who would die before he knew I was there.
"Aria!" Sarah's voice dragged me back. She was kneeling beside me, her hand on my shoulder. "What's happening?"
"I can't... I can't breathe."
"Yes, you can. In through your nose, out through your mouth. That's it."
Slowly, the panic receded. The hallway became just a hallway again, not a corridor in some dark mansion. Sarah's face came back into focus, worried but calm.
"Better?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
"This is more than bad dreams, isn't it?"
"I don't know what it is."
She helped me to my feet. "Come on. Let's get you some water, and then maybe you should go home."
"I have clients..."
"I can cover your morning sessions. You need to take care of yourself."
But I didn't go home. Instead, I found myself in the university library, surrounded by books on psychology, neurology, and trauma recovery. I told myself I was researching for a client, but the truth was I needed to understand what was happening to me.
"Dissociative identity disorder," I muttered, flipping through a textbook. "Repressed memory syndrome. Post-traumatic stress."
Nothing fit. My symptoms weren't following any recognized pattern. The memories—if that's what they were—felt too real, too specific. Too violent.
I closed the psychology books and moved to a different section. Folklore. Mythology. Anything that might explain the impossible things I kept seeing in my dreams.
"Shadow magic," I whispered, reading from a book on Celtic mythology. "The ability to manipulate darkness, to move unseen through shadows. Practitioners often exhibit enhanced physical abilities and resistance to conventional weapons."
I laughed, but it came out harsh and bitter. "Right. Because I'm magical now."
But as I read more, something cold settled in my stomach. Blood magic. Psychic manipulation. Memory alteration. All described in academic terms as "folklore" and "historical beliefs," but the details were too specific, too precise.
Too familiar.
"Find something interesting?"
I spun around so fast I knocked over my chair. A young man stood behind me, maybe twenty-five, with prematurely gray hair. He wore a expensive suit that didn't quite hide the supernatural energy radiating from him.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I'm Marcus. I heard you're the counselor who specializes in supernatural trauma."
"How did you..." I stopped, forcing myself to breathe. "I mean, yes. I work with clients who have... unusual experiences."
"Good. Because I need to talk to someone who understands." He gestured to the chair across from me. "May I?"
I wanted to say no. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to get away from this man who felt dangerous in ways I couldn't explain. But he was a potential client, and I was a professional.
"Of course."
He sat, his movements too fluid, too controlled. "I've been having dreams. Visions, really. About a woman who can walk through shadows."
My heart stopped. "That's... that's quite specific."
"She's very skilled. But something happened to her. Someone took her memories, locked away her power." His eyes fixed on mine. "I think she's in danger."
"Mr...?"
"Just Marcus. And I think you know exactly who I'm talking about, don't you, Aria?"
The book slipped from my hands, pages fluttering as it hit the floor. "I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"The dreams started after you met him, didn't they? The one who came to your office. Who looked at you like he'd seen a ghost."
I stood up so fast my chair toppled backward. "I think you should leave."
"He's not your enemy, Aria. Not anymore." Marcus stood as well, his movements predatory. "But the woman who made you forget—she's coming. And when she finds you, she'll want her weapon back."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you?" He stepped closer, and suddenly the air felt thick, oppressive. "Close your eyes, Aria. Tell me what you see."
"No." But even as I said it, my eyes were drifting shut. The library faded around me, replaced by something else. Somewhere else.
A basement. Stone walls. A woman with silver hair and ageless face standing over me. "You are my masterpiece," she said, and her voice was like silk over steel. "You are death itself, shaped by my hands."
"I don't want to be," I whispered, but the words came from someone else's mouth. Someone younger. Someone who still believed she had a choice.
"What you want is irrelevant. You are what I made you. What the family needs."
I opened my eyes, gasping. Marcus was gone. The library was quiet except for my ragged breathing and the whisper of turning pages from other students.
But on the table where he'd been sitting was a business card. No name, no address. Just a phone number and five words that made my blood freeze:
"When you remember, call me."
I made it home by muscle memory alone, my mind reeling. Thomas was in the kitchen, humming while he made his afternoon tea. The normalcy of it almost broke me.
"You're home early," he said without turning around. "How was your day?"
"Fine." I sank into one of the kitchen chairs. "Thomas, what do you know about the night you found me?"
His humming stopped. "Why do you ask?"
"I've been having dreams. They feel like memories, but they can't be. They're too..." I searched for the word. "Too dark."
He turned, his expression carefully neutral. "What kind of dreams?"
"Violence. Blood. A woman who taught me to kill." I laughed, but it sounded hollow. "Crazy, right?"
Thomas was quiet for a long moment. Then he sat across from me, his weathered hands folded on the table. "Aria, there's something I never told you about that night."
"What?"
"Before you went unconscious. You were..." He paused, seeming to weigh his words. "You were defending yourself. Even unconscious, you were fighting invisible attackers. And the way you moved—I've never seen anything like it."
"Thomas..."
"There were things. Injuries that had already healed. Scars that looked fresh but felt years old." He reached across the table, taking my hands. "I've always suspected you were running from something. Someone. But I never pushed because you seemed so determined to build a new life."
"What if the new life is the lie?" The words came out barely above a whisper. "What if I'm not who I think I am?"
"Then we'll figure it out together."
I squeezed his hands, drawing strength from his steady presence. "I think I need to remember. Even if it hurts."
"Are you sure?"
I thought of the stranger in my office, the way he'd looked at me with recognition and pain. I thought of Marcus and his cryptic warnings. I thought of the woman in my dreams, the one with silver hair and cold eyes.
"No," I said. "But I think I have to try."
Because somewhere in the darkness of my forgotten past, something was stirring. Something that had been sleeping for five years, waiting for the right moment to wake up.
And I had the terrible feeling that moment was coming whether I was ready or not.