# Chapter 3 - The Eye That Breaks the Future
## Scene 1 - Eco Dawn
The ancient library of Luciano Mansion was a dust sanctuary and secrets, his dark oak shelves curving under the weight of cracked leather bound volumes and yellowed parchments for time. At dawn, the pink light of the Sicilian sun infiltrated herself through the tall bow windows, throwing beams that danced as ghosts on the carved tables. Valentina was there from the night, her eyes burning with fatigue, the stained fingers of paint by leafing the old daily diaries. Each page was a labyrinth: Arcane symbols scribbled on the banks, temporal lines maps that are interposed as exposed veins, names of allies and enemies scratched with fury, as if her father had tried to erase the Future with the tip of the pen.
When playing a page particularly spent - a dated entry of three months earlier, describing a vision of "golden eyes" -, small visual distortions set free, like smoke from an old lamp. Borders of the words trembled, the air around waved slightly, a common effect when the futures were unstable, as if the fabric of reality protested against the weight of the odds. Valentina frowned, trying to rebuild the last fragmented vision involving Marco Salvatore. Reaper: His black eyes, the touch of the pulse, the ramifications of death, salvation and desire that intertwined as a Gordio knot. She closed her eyes, forcing the gift to manifest, but nothing came - just an empty echo, like a cracked bell.
A sudden shiver ran through the room, lifting the hairs on the back of his neck. Library lights - modernized gas lamps with electricity - wiped, blinking at an irregular rhythm, as if the house of the house would hit out of compass. The air became thick, impregnated with a metallic scent, like ozone after a storm, and the silence became absolute, swallowing to the distant buzz of the bees in the garden.
Then, from the emptiness between the shelves, a voice emerged: soft, severe, engaging, as velvet brushing a blade. "He was not worthy of the gift he carried. But you ... you are. "
Valentina froze, heart firing. It was not Tanika - the anchor of petals and soft lights. This presence was something much more dangerous, a predator disguised as a whisper.
## Scene 2 - First Manifestation of Birgit
The room bent, as if the perspective and depth were folded by invisible hands - the shelves stretching at impossible angles, the floor leaning slightly to the center, where the vermilion light vibrated on the Shelves like a malignant aurora. Valentina blinked, and there she was: Birgit Ekdahl emerging in close, as if emerged directly from the space between two blinks, the air crackling around her shape.
Birgit was a brutal contrast vision: the face partially hidden by a simple white veil, diaphanous, which floated as fog, revealing only the sharp contours of high-face apples and lips curved in a smile that does not He reached his eyes. Thin, almost delicate rim glasses reflected light fractals that danced as broken prisms, capturing and refracting the red of the room in hypnotic patterns. His eyes were intense golden, the iris in hypnotic spiral, spinning slowly like melted honey swirls, sucking the look of who dared to look at them. A centered bindi on the forehead, a live red spot like fresh blood, anchored facial marks in ritualistic style - fine henna lines of golden henna tracing ancient runes of the cheeks, such as scars of a forgotten god.
Brussie Largo, in Tom Burgundy Dark, crowned his head, adorned with dark green foliage intertwined as sleeping snakes and a pendant pink earring - not a common flower, but a crystallized petal structure that tinkled Fracely. Long braids in blue-midnight and magenta fell like waterfalls over the shoulders, stuck by a golden clamp that shone with intricate notches, echoing the fractals of his glasses. She raised her hand slowly, making the V-sign with her fingers - a gesture that in Tanika evoked performance peace; In Birgit, it distorted any innocent interpretation, becoming a provocation, a veiled threat of victory or surrender.
The lighting around her was hard, contrasted, cinematic - deep shadows cutting her face like blades, while the red bathed in higher resolution to the world around, as if Birgit existed in a sharper layer of more clear, more cruel. She watched Valentina not like a person, but like a board: reading all her possibilities simultaneously, her golden eyes spinning slowly.
"Your future is breaking, Luciano child," she said, her voice echoing with layers, as if she spoke of multiple plans at the same time. "And you have no idea what that means to me."
## Scene 3 - Analysis and threat
Valentina tried to retreat, the heels scraping on the Persian carpet, but the air added, and Birgit appeared instantly behind her - not perceptible displacement, only a blur of red and gold, as if the space between them had been edited out of existence. Her scent invaded the air: burned incense mixed with something metallic, as heated copper, choking the smell of old books.
Birgit held out his hand, his long and pale fingers inspecting the Damian ring on Valentina's finger without touching him - hovering over millimeters, as if he could dissolve him with proximity. "A sentimental fool," he murmured, the veil rippling with his breath. "You tried to protect you ... Anulating paths that did not belong to you. As if the fate was a safe he could lock. "
"Who - or what-the hell are you?" Valentine demanded, hoarse voice, the fist closed around the ring. The pain under the sternum pulsed, a warning, but the sun refused to manifest under that spiral look.
Birgit smiled under the veil, a slow gesture that revealed perfect teeth, sharp as those of a predator. "I am what comes up when the destination needs a correction. The scissors in the tangled wires. " She tilted her head, pink earring tilting like a funeral bell. "That little green anchor you found ... Tanika, are not you? It stabilizes. Glue the shards back, pretending that the vase never broke. I destabilize. I break what needs to be broken for something new - something pure - emerges. "
With a fingertips - a dry sound, like twigs departing - Birgit designed several versions of Valentina around the library. Ethery ghosts blinked to life: a living and triumphant valentine, raising a glass of red wine in a ballroom; another dead, the inert body in a rainy alley, eyes glazed to the sky; An unrecognizable third, the distorted face in mystical agony, golden veins pulsating under the skin as rivers of lava. They hovered, overlapping, multiplying on a carousel of horrors.
"Your line is not special," continued Birgit, surrounding the central table as a panther. "It's just ... noisy. Other ECOS, other paths colliding. And it bothers me. "
Valentina felt the mind crack of pain, a sharp crack in trying to keep up with the overlapping - the gift of her rebelling, as if Birgit was stretching beyond the limit. "Stop it," she grunted, pressing her hands against the temples.
Birgit stopped, his golden eyes fixed, spinning slowly. "Oh, but I decide to show my true power. Show me what you fear. "
Before Valentina could resist, the vision was ripped off without consent - a violent tug in the soul, like hooks stuck in the skull.
## Scene 4 - Forced View
The world has dissolved in an altered mental plane, all bathed in pure vermilion - solid, oppressive color, from the presence of Birgit, as if the blood of the future had leaked to color reality. There were no shadows here, just layers of red that pulsed like an exposed heart, the dense and hot air, loaded with indistinct whispers.
Valentina floated in the center, helpless, and the images erupted: Marco "Reaper" Salvatore, always it, in its multiple faces. In a scene, he held her in his arms, a bleeding valentine bleeding against his chest, his black eyes filled with a pain he did not match the grim of the legends - "Hold, Valentina, do not end," he murmured, while Bullets rained around. In another, cruel, he lifted the weapon with hesitation, the pipe pressed against her forehead, his finger on trigger trembling before the final firing, her blood splashing in his dark coat. In a third, he protected her, his body interposing between her and a row of snipers, bullets ripping her flesh while he growled: "Touch her and I reap all of you."
Birgit appeared inside the vision, in the same close hyperdetal - white veil contrasting with red, spiral eyes spinning faster now, like golden hurricanes. She materialized next to Marco, touching his shoulder in one of the scenes, and Reaper dissolved in Dust Vermilion. "Your futures with him are paradoxic," she explained, her voice echoing in red as a mantra. "Three possibilities that should be excluded ... coexist. One saves you, one destroys you, a tie that no wire cuts. This is not an accident, a child Luciano. It's an anomaly. "
Valentina tried to move, but the red was anchored, viscous as clotted blood. "Why? What do you get out of it? "
Birgit leaned forward, the hat Bruxesco projecting shadows impossible in the mental plane, the pink earring shining like a drop of poison. "If this paradox continues to grow, the tissue that maintains its lineage - and my existence - can break. I exist on the interstices of the impossible, in the ways that the anchors like Tanika reject. No paradoxes, no ruptures, I dissolve. And I will not let you stop existing worlds that owe me obedience. "
She reached out, touching Valentina's forehead with finger tip - the red bindi burning as an iron mark. The vision has been broken then, as a glass broken in slow motion, vermilion shards falling into an infinite abyss, cutting the air with sharp cracks.
## Scene 5 - The Monstrous Proposal
The library is partially restored, the shelves straightening up with an old wooden creak, the lights stabilizing in a yellowish and unstable glow, as if the world recovers after an earthquake. Valentina fell to her knees, the cold floor against the sweaty palms, the chest panting as if she had run a marathon through hell. The Damian ring pulsed hot on his finger, a weak anchorage reminder.
Birgit hovered above her, immaculate, the V-sign still erected in the extended hand - an offer that was provocation, a hand of salvation with sharp nails. "I can help her survive the futures that pursue her," she said, her voice now a seductive purr. "I can cut the paradoxes, seal the cracks. Leave it with a clean, strong path. "
Valentina looked up, fury bubbling through exhaustion. "And the price?"
Break. Birgit tilted his head, the blue braids and magenta cascading as night rivers. "In return, you will give me the name of the traitor within the Luciano family. Before you even know it. "
"This is impossible," spat Valentina, retreating on the floor, knees scraping the rug. "No one knows yet. Neither do I. "
Birgit laughed - a low sound, like cracked bells tilting in a crypt. "Impossible is just the name of the things I have not broken." With this, she disappeared into a clean and sharp visual effect: the contours of her body cuts out of reality as an invisible scissors passing through the air, leaving only a trail of gold fractals that dissipated as smoke.
## Chapter / Hook Closing
At the moment Birgit disappeared, the silence of the library broke with a new, short, brutal, inevitable vision, forcing himself through the exhausted mind of Valentina as a blade.
Marco Salvatore, Reaper, crossed the gates of Luciano mansion under the night cloak, the dark coat rippling like raven wings. His black eyes swept the shadows, calculators, predatory.
And someone inside the family - an indistinct silhouette, but familiar - opened the side door, gesturing for him to be silent.
Fade out.