# Chapter 2 - The Apparition of Tanika August
## Scene 1 - Awakening after the visions
The guest bedroom in Luciano Mansion was a reluctant refuge, with lined walls of faded tapestry that portrayed ancestral hunts - wolves tasting secured under full moons. The morning after the funeral was filtered through the heavy velvet curtains, creating a milky effect on the air, as if the Sicilian sun hesitated in invading the mourning of the house. Valentina woke up with the sensation of a psychic hangover, the kind that left the skull throbbing and the fragmented thoughts like shards of mirror. The visions of Reaper still chased her: those black eyes, hesitant touch on the pulse, the ramifications of death and kiss that intertwined as venomous vines. She sat on the bed, the embolifted sheet around her legs, and massaged the temples, trying to anchor on the present.
But something was wrong. A subtle invasion in his perception, not as the sharp visions that struck it, but soft, as fog infiltrating by cracks. The air carried a strange perfume: sweet and earthy, with notes of fresh petals and moist moss, as if the garden had been distilled in essence and sprinkled there. It did not belong to anyone in the house - neither Serena's heavy jasmine nor Enzo's bitter tobacco. Valentina frowned, the senses sharpened by the gift that cursed her and saved her.
At the edge of peripheral vision, small fragments of colored light flashed - pink and green pastel tones, such as fairy dust dancing in the air. It was not a premonition; Her visions came with pain, with the hot iron under the sternum. That was ... something else. Harmless, maybe. Or worse: intentional.
From the second floor corridor, a soft sound echoed - almost musical, like the tinkling of wind bells made of thin glass, mixed with muffled, ethereal laughter as if coming from a dream of others. Valentina froze. The sharp feeling that he was not alone invaded her, a shiver that went up by the spine like invisible fingers.
## Scene 2 - The Impossible Meeting
Valentina slid her feet to the tile tile floor, wearing a simple robe on the sweater. He followed the sound through the inner corridor of the east wing, the silent steps like those of a ghost in his own house. The air looked dusher there, loaded with expectation, and the perfume intensified, wrapping it as an unwanted hug. The muffled laughter remained light and performic, as if someone was rehearsing a piece just for her.
Clinging the corner, near an arched window that led to the inner courtyard, she stopped. There, in a front position, as if it had been positioned by an invisible director, the figure was. Waiting for her.
Tanika August was a vision in itself - young and androgynous, with a presence that challenged the edges of the real. Her big hat, in the format of Amanita Muscaria, live red with white sweets, captured the diffuse light of the morning and refracted it in soft tones, as if she were lit inside out. Brown-reddish long hair fell into loose waves, with a blond-clear fringe that framed his face almost ironic, as a poorly stored secret. Pink heart shaped glasses balanced on the tip of the nose, reflecting soft patterns of light that danced like miniature boreal auroras. She wore an oversized high-necked brown sweater, wooled woolen texture with dry moss wires, falling loose over wide pants of beige linen. A black choker ties his neck, and a collar with silver pentagram hung just below, gleaming with a mystical coldness. White flower earrings - impossibly fresh daisies - swayed from his ears, capturing the movement of the air.
Her cheeks were rosy, almost lit inside out, as if flushed by an eternal blush. And then, the gesture: Tanika lifted both hands, making the V-sign with her fingers, a natural and performative gesture, as if she were posing for a photograph that only existed in her mind. Behind her, impossible manner, a flag of the aromântico spectrum floated in horizontal gray, white, green and black strips - lightly rippled, as if touched by a wind of another plane, suspended in the air without support.
The whole composition was a fusion of soft aesthetic and cottagecore: ethereal, cozy, but with a touch of another world, as if Tanika did not obey the visual rules of the physical world. She looked out of a gloomy fairy tale, where the flowers whispered secrets and the fungi were portals.
Valentina was completely speechless. Not by appearance - although it was striking, disturbingly beautiful - but by the logical impossibility. No one should be there. The east wing was locked from Damiano's death; The guards patrolled like hunting dogs, and Enzo had guaranteed the funeral off the last open event. How? Who was this intruder that smelled the virgin earth and smiled as if the world was a particular stage?
Tanika tilted her head, the hat designing a red shadow on the floor. His smile was quiet, serene, like someone who had seen all possible ends. "You took me to see me. But that's okay. Sometimes the future disturbs the view. "
## Scene 3 - Identity and Purpose
The presence of Tanika altered the surrounding environment like a subtle wave: the window light softened, gaining a milky golden glow; The shadows in the corners of the hallway hazarded, as if ashamed of his own darkness; And the colors - the faded brown of the walls, the pale green of the tapestries - seemed more vibrant, saturated, as if the world had been brushed with a fresh layer of life.
Valentina recovered her voice, sharp as a blade. "Who the hell are you? And how did you get in here? "
Tanika lowered her hands slowly, the V-sign dissolving into a casual gesture. "My name is Tanika August. And I came because you are seeing things that should not see alone. " His voice was light, musical, with an accent that was not anchored nowhere - neither Sicilian nor American, as if words were woven of echoes.
Valentina took a step forward, his fists clenched. "Explanations. Now. Or I call the guards and you disappear in a humid cell. "
Tanika did not move, imperturbable, pink glasses reflecting Valentina's tense face. "Your gift is hereditary, is not it? Luciano always had a foot in the veil - views that fold time as paper. Your father tried to navigate this without help. He tried to map the ways alone, like a blind captain in a storm. And it died for it. A bullet he saw come, but he could not divert because the future fractured. "
Hostility rose by Valentina's chest, hot as the pain under the sternum. "You do not know anything about my father. Or about me. "
"I know enough." Tanika leaned slightly, the pentagram in the necklace swinging like a pendulum. "Your ways are multiplying too fast. Marco Salvatore - Reaper - should not appear in three futures at the same time. One where he kills you, one where you save you, one where you intertwine like cursed lovers. This is not a vision. It's rupture. The fabric of what will come is tearing, and you are the wire that will pull everything down. "
Valentina stepped back, the Damian ring burning on her finger as a living reminder. Tanika then approached, slowly, and touched the ring lightly with the tip of her fingers - a light touch like feather, but that sent a wave of energy down the hall. The air cropped, and flashes erupted in Valentina's mind: divergent paths branching as roots of an ancient tree, destinations collapsing in piles of ashes, different versions of herself - a bloody queen, a fugitive Broken, a betrayed lover - blinking like frames of an accelerated movie.
When the wave passed, Tanika stepped back, her eyes behind her pink glasses fixed on Valentina. "I'm not a seer like you. I do not see the future - I anchor. I am an anchor of probability, I exist in the interstices where the future incompatible ones are shocked. Without me, the visions kill you inside. Too much overlap, and the human brain becomes pulp. "
Valentina blinked, processing. Tanika was not inserted into the mafia world of betrayals and bullets - she was in the metaphysical tissue, in the invisible wires that shaped the destinies Valentina could see. A guardian, maybe. Or a trap dressed in flowers.
## Scene 4 - The Warning
Tanika gestured with her head, as if the hallway was just a prelude. "Come. The Garden calls. " She turned, the red hat swinging, and led Valentina as if she already knew each corner of the mansion - descending a side ladder that led to the inner garden, a walled oasis of golden olive trees and thorny roses. The air there was cooler, loaded from the distant buzz of bees, but Tanika watched the flowers with a critical look, leaning down to smell a wilted rose. "This place is full of possible deaths. Each petal a non-made choice, every thorn a delayed betrayal. "
Valentina followed her, reluctantly, the robe rustling against the stones. "How did you get into the mansion? No one passes through the gates without being searched. "
Tanika shrugged, a fluid and uncommitted gesture, as if the question was irrelevant as the climate. "I did not go. I only appeared when you could see me. The anchors do not use doors - we used the cracks in time. " The flag behind her curled again, as if responding to a particular wind, the color bands mixing to the green of the leaves.
She stopped near a stone bench covered with moss and held out her hand, depositing in Valentina's palm a small object: a white, translucent petal, which did not belong to any flower of the garden. It was perfect, unbelievable, with thin veins that pulsed weakly with internal light. "From now on, whenever the future leave, I'll be close. I squeeze it, and I come. But use wisely - each anchor has a cost. "
Valentina closed her fingers around the petal, feeling a cold tingling. "Cost like?"
Before Tanika answered, she looked at the emptiness beyond the olive trees, her eyes narrowing behind her glasses. "He's coming. The man of the three deaths. "
The mention was unequivocal: Marco "Reaper" Salvatore. The name hovered in the air like smoke, and Valentina felt the sternum burn again, an echo of the night visions.
Tanika began to disappear then, just as it had emerging - dissolving in soft light, the contours of the body blurring as watercolor in the rain. The red hat was the last to disappear, leaving a trail of white pinks floating as confetti. His last words echoed, light as leaves in the wind: "Choose well what future you will counteract. Not all survive their own vision. "
## Chapter / Hook Closing
Valentina remained alone in the garden, the cold white petal against the sweaty palm. Tanika's perfume still hovered, mixed with jasmine, a reminder that the world had changed - or always out like this, and she only saw the cracks.
Behind her, heavy footsteps echoed from the interior of the mansion, deliberate, as the beating of a mechanical heart. She turned slowly, and the shadow of someone loudly projected at the arched door - elongated silhouette, wide shoulders, a figure that smelled of danger and cigar.
Fade out.