Eden
Eden pressed her palm against the journal's brittle pages, tracing the Holloway name again and again as if she could wear it down into something less real.
Holloway.
It meant nothing to her. And yet, it echoed in her skull like something old and unfinished.
She stared into the cracked mirror above the washbasin in her room, searching for something—anything—that might prove the book wrong. But her face offered no comfort. Her eyes were darker than she remembered. Her skin, paler.
Lately, she'd been waking up with blood beneath her fingernails. She told herself it was from training. Ritual cuts. The usual.
But she'd checked her roommate's bed two nights ago. It was empty. No explanation. No replacement.
And no one spoke of her again.
During morning litany, the Matron passed her a bowl filled with dark water. Eden peered into it, expecting her reflection—but what she saw instead was a girl in fire.
The girl wore her face. But the smile was not hers. It was cruel, like she knew something Eden didn't.
"I don't understand what I'm becoming," Eden whispered when the Matron knelt beside her.
"You were never meant to understand," the woman replied, brushing Eden's hair behind her ear like a mother would. "You were meant to remember."
The Matron's hand slid into her pocket, pulling out a rusted pendant. It was shaped like a spiral… but within its curves was something more—a faint outline of a tree.
"Your mother gave this to the Spiral before she bled."
"My mother's dead."
The Matron smiled. "And yet, she still gives."
Eden stared at the pendant in her palm. It was warm.
Claire
Claire stood barefoot in the field behind the Holloway house, the yellow grass dead and brittle beneath her. The barn had burned down years ago—set aflame the night she ran, the night her sister died screaming.
She hadn't spoken of that night in twenty years.
Now the memories returned in broken pieces: the chanting, the black robes, the feeling of her own fingernails digging into her palms to keep from crying.
It had started as a game. That's what they told her. The Spiral was a puzzle. The Spiral was truth. The Spiral was love.
But then the blood came. And the rules changed.
She remembered the ritual that changed everything—the one they said would awaken her gift. Instead, it gave her nightmares.
She'd run that night, barefoot, with the flames behind her and her baby niece crying in her arms.
Claire thought she'd saved her. She thought she'd buried the past.
But now Eden was somewhere in Gracemire. And Claire could feel the Spiral turning again.
Eden
She wore the pendant tucked beneath her collar for three days before she dared to touch it again.
That night, she carved a spiral into her palm beneath the moonlight. The pain brought clarity. And with it, a memory.
She was a child. Sitting on a porch. A woman humming in the distance. She remembered fingers brushing her curls from her face.
A voice: "You'll be more than me, little star. You'll burn brighter. You'll survive."
Then the fire. Then the screaming.
She woke gasping, the spiral in her palm burning red.
Claire
Claire lit a cigarette with shaking hands as she flipped through an old, hidden notebook she hadn't touched in years.
Drawings. Ritual circles. Names of the other children. Some were marked with crosses. Some with spirals.
And there, scrawled in a younger version of her own handwriting: Eden Holloway – flameborn.
Claire stared at the word for a long time. She hadn't written it.
But someone had used her notebook.
She opened the motel mini-fridge, pushed aside water bottles, and pulled out the box she'd kept sealed for decades. Inside, wrapped in a tattered cloth, was the ritual knife.
Its edge was still sharp. The spiral etched along the blade gleamed faintly in the low light.
The same knife used in Eden's birth rite.