The awakening is not a single day. It has already—

The words were exactly as she had written them, ink dark and steady on the old paper. Then the letters began to move on their own.

They bled and shifted, reshaping slowly in front of me like something alive. Fresh strokes formed beneath the first line, the black ink blooming across the yellowed surface as if an invisible hand was writing in real time.

I transferred what I was carrying to Venna Belmonte. You have to stop the awakening, Abram. The world can still be a better place for everyone.

Venna Belmonte.

My eyes went back to the photographs on the walls. The girl. The one in every frame — maybe twenty, with the same striking blue hair and the same piercing eyes as Riya. She smiled in garden sunlight, sat reading by a window, stood beside a man who could have been her father. The same girl, again and again.

The system had already told me sources released what they carried to another primordial woman when they felt themselves weakening. Riya had passed it to Venna.

So even now, with Riya dead in the corridor above me, the count hadn’t dropped. What made her a source was still alive somewhere inside the walls, wearing another face. Another woman to find. Another name buried in plain sight behind a wall of family portraits.

[Leave now. Edgar Belmonte is coming, and he may take you for the killer.]

The system warned me while the paper was still writing itself. I slid it into my pocket and got out of the house fast, boots pounding down the stairs and across the wooden floor.

I got into the car and drove off the property, the tires kicking up gravel behind me. Riya Belmonte was dead.

"What happens if I fail to mark all the primordial women?" I asked the system as I drove, hands tight on the wheel. Not because I didn’t know. I needed to think. I didn’t want anyone else dying.

[The awakening happens. Every ability user becomes a vessel.]

I hit the brakes hard. The car jerked to a stop in the middle of the quiet road. Good thing it wasn’t busy.

"So that’s what this was all about," I said, voice rising.

[Processing...]

[What?] For the first time, the system sounded uncertain.

"Charging the girls." The anger was rising in me, hot and sharp. "Female ability users. Not any other girls. Female ability users."

[You weren’t only charging them. You were charging yourself too. All of it has been working toward your purpose.]

"Fuck the purpose," I said, gripping the wheel until my knuckles went white. "This isn’t anything I wished for. This is what a man I never knew designed for me."

I didn’t fully know why I was burning. Whether it was that my father had used every primordial woman, or that he’d turned me into the same thing. Made me sleep with one girl after another, building attachments I couldn’t walk away from.

[You’re not okay, Abram.]

"You had me sleep with female ability users knowing every one of them would form an attachment, and now you tell me the awakening is going to destroy all of them." My voice climbed. "Charging was about attachment. Wasn’t it?" I didn’t leave room for an answer. "And now that I’m attached, you’ve left me no way out."

I thought about every girl I’d charged. All ability users. All of them attached to me, and me to them. The purpose wasn’t something I’d taken on. It was something being forced into me one connection at a time. I thought about Sherry. How attached I already was. And the system telling me there was a chance she was carrying my child.

"Bram."

A voice. A car had pulled up beside mine while I was lost in it, and I couldn’t say how long it had been there. Mercury sat inside the driver’s seat, smiling brightly, her hair catching the afternoon light.

"Mercury." I came back to the moment. "Didn’t expect to see you in the capital."

"Yeah." She was beaming. "And here I am. Days feel like years, Bram. Come have a drink with me."

"Sure," I said.

***

We sat in a quiet corner of the coffee shop, afternoon light streaming through large windows and painting the wooden tables in warm gold. The air smelled of fresh grounds and baked pastries, a comforting contrast to the sterile tension I’d carried all day. My mind needed the reset. I hadn’t looked at the whole system the way I looked at it now. Not until Riya died.

"So how’s the new job treating you?" Mercury asked, leaning back in her chair, one leg crossed over the other. Her fingers tapped idly against her cup as she watched me.

"Boring."

"Of course it is." She nodded, a knowing smirk tugging at her lips. "Everything in here sucks. You miss the Fallen City?"

"Yeah." I sank deeper into the seat, the wood creaking softly under my weight. "Who wouldn’t?"

She smiled, eyes bright with shared memory. She’d clearly enjoyed the outside more than anyone should have.

"Nothing beats a place full of zombies," she said, voice laced with dark humor.

"Esther," a voice called from the counter.

A girl rose from a nearby table, her coffee ready, and went to collect it. Mercury tracked her the whole way, head tilting slightly, then turned back to me with a mischievous glint.

"Go after her," she said, nudging my foot under the table.

I shook my head. She watched my eyes to see if they’d drift to the girl’s backside. They didn’t.

"Bram." She looked genuinely surprised, eyebrows lifting. "This is new. The Bram I knew out there fucked every girl on that mission except me, and only because we ran out of time."

"That’s not true," I said.

"Come on. Name one you didn’t."

I didn’t answer. She wasn’t going to let it go.

"Okay," I said finally, meeting her gaze. "I’m a different man now."

"No you’re not." She laughed, leaning forward, elbows on the table. "The Bram I know can’t—"

"I’m with Sherry now."

The words landed. Her laughter faded, replaced by genuine surprise as she studied my face.

"You were with Sherry in the Fallen City too," she said, testing.

"No. I wasn’t." The seriousness in my voice made her pause.

"Flying Virginia," the barista called from the counter.

"Isn’t that the name you gave them?" I asked, remembering it with a small grin.

"I’m not getting up until he says it right." She was already giggling, eyes sparkling with mischief.

I laughed with her, the system stress dropping away for a second. Mercury was a whole mood, chaotic, unfiltered, impossible to ignore.

"Flying Virginia," the barista tried again, his voice cracking slightly with embarrassment as he read from the cup.

"We should make more time," I said, leaning back in my chair. "Meet up properly."

"Yeah," Mercury replied, her eyes lighting up. "I moved to the capital, by the way."

"Flying Vagina," the barista called out at last, finally reading it the way Mercury had written it. She stood up with a perfectly straight face, smoothing her clothes as she walked to the counter. I watched her go, a grin spreading across mine.

"She’s insane," I said to myself, shaking my head.

[Today is a revolutionary day inside the walls. The pattern is complete. There is nothing the host can do about it.]

The notification surfaced again, cold and insistent.

Then let it happen.