Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted, Grounds
Earlier That Day
The Salvatore School was the kind of place that looked like it was on a postcard. It had old-money style, perfectly manicured trees, and the kind of peace that screamed: nothing bad ever happens here.
Elena felt like
This, of course, meant that something bad was always going on in this place.
Hope Mikaelson stood at the edge of the training area, observing the students as they filtered out into the day after morning drills. Too smooth with the vampires, too twitchy with the wolves. Witches were too bored. A boredom that only someone with the power of life-and-death control over another person can manage.
She kept her hands shoved into her hoodie pocket so no one could see how tightly her fingers were clenched.
Behind her, Alaric's voice came from the steps. "You're early,"
Hope didn't turn. "You're late."
He let out a noise that was laughter or maybe just tiredness. 'You slept?'
Hope's eyes stayed on the field. "A little," she said.
This was a lie. Hope did not really sleep. She closed her eyes and waiting for her mind to stop replaying the previous two years as a form of punishment. This was as close as she got.
Alaric appeared beside her, coffee cup in hand and jacketalreadydonned as if he'd been up since the crack of dawn doing the thing he always did: keeping a school afloat through pure stubbornness and denial.
"We're leaving in ten," he said. "Atlanta."
Finally, Hope looked at him. "You're taking me?"
Alaric drank his coffee like it was a shield. "You're the best person for this," he said. Some of what he said registered
Hope's mouth tightened in response. That was no compliment. That was an assignment.
"What's his name?" she asked.
"Rafael," Alaric said. "Rafael Waithe. Foster child. Aggression incidents. One report alleges that he threw a lawn mower through a patio door."
"That's… subtle," Hope blinked once.
Alaric's eyes flicked towards the main building, as if the school might hear them and consider similar action. "There's a church. He's meeting potential foster families today. The world identified him last night," he said.
Hope felt the message *flagged* like a hook in her ribs. The world flagged people when magic awakened loudly enough to be noticed by the world. When something in them passed from "weird kid" to "supernatural problem."
"We're just picking him up?" she asked.
"We're talking," Alaric said firmly. "We're offering him a place where he won't accidentally hurt anyone. We're not kidnappers."
"Hope gave him a look."
Alaric sighed. "We're not kidnapping unless he's converting at the last minute within a church. Then it's. .. aggressive recruitment."
Hope did not smile. Hope did not have enough energy to smile.
They set off walking towards the parking lot.
"How old?" Hope asked.
"Seventeen," Alaric replied. "Tough life. Foster care system cycled him and his brother in and
Hope's steps slowed slightly. "Brother?"
"Foster brother," Alaric clarified. "Name's Landon Kirby. Human, as far as we know. Attached at the hip,"
Hope ceased.
Alaric continued walking two steps ahead until he realized she was not following and turned back.
Hope's face was blank. Her eyes were not.
'Did you just say Landon Kirby?' she asked.
Alaric scowled. "You know
Hope's eyes were fixed on the gravel at her feet as if the solution might be buried there. "I've met him once. Mystic Falls. He had an outrageous amount of confidence for a kid with… nothing."
But the memory came anyway. A summer day. A boy smiling too easily. Klaus's death loomed in the background like a storm cloud that never went away.
Hope swallowed. "It doesn't matter."
"Exactly, Berenice, exactly what we need. It does if you freeze up when we're trying to convince a werewolf to come with us."
Hope's jaw clenched. "I don't freeze up."
Alaric's expression mollified ever so slightly, which made it somehow worse. "Hope."
"Hope, start walking again," she said. "We are supposed to meet Rafael. And we definitely don't need Landon with us."
Alaric didn't disagree, since he didn't have to. He was the headmaster. He was the grown-up. He could pretend like the plan actually meant something even when the world itself laughed at them.
The trio got into the SUV. Hope climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door, gazing out at the window as if willing the day to comply.
"Now, let's try to find
As the school fell behind them, Hope felt that familiar tug in her chest, the one that always happened when she left school grounds.
But the world that existed around them didn't care that it was a "safe place." It was the world where her family was murdered.
Alaric drove as if he'd done this too many times: steady hands, scanning eyes, already mentally calculating routes out and worst-case scenarios.
"You're quiet," he said.
"I'm thinking." Hope's gaze was fixed on trees blurring past.
"That's never comforting," Alaric muttered
Hope dismissed it. She remained haunted by visions of Landon's face. Listen to the sound of his voice from that day, stored away in her mind as *unfinished business.*
Landon Kirby wasn't supposed to matter.
But in Hope's life, anything that had shown up one time always came back.
It was a rule.
And Hope was tired of rules.
---
Unmarked Property - North Woods
Same day
Ortega did not sleep.
Not really.
He sat on the cold stone inside a cage that wasn't a cage but a statement all its own: "we don't know what you are, so we built the worst thing we could imagine and hoped it would work."
The runes etched onto metal thrummed against his skin like a throbbing headache. They weren't just tied to his body, holding it back. They pressed against his mind, a steady, weightless pressure forcing cognition to be a painful process of pulling a chain through the muck.
He looked at the ceiling, where the brick arched away above, old and wet and waiting.
Outside the circle, the witches were at work. A soft crunching of footsteps. Paper scraping. A person lighting another candle, although too many were already burning.
They had also argued for hours.
Kill it. Analyze it. Embalm it. Wait for nature.
Ortega had quickly learned that none of them could agree on anything, but at least they all knew this: they were scared of him.
And fear made people stupid.
He held his breathing steady. He held his gaze flat. He held his instincts barely leashed, because every time he let even a whisper of that other part of him creep to the surface, he could feel the runes answering with a thrum of pain and a tang of smoke on the edges of his lungs.
Nevertheless, silence did something even worse than pain.
The silence gave him the space to remember.
Initially, he tried not to.
But the memories started seeping through anyway. It was as if the cage was not only holding him back but was also rudimentarily extracting the memories from him.
He closed his eyes.
The stone underneath his back vanished.
---
There was sunlight.
Not Mystic Falls sunlight either. Not this world's candlelit, gothic, supernatural mood lighting.
Real sunlight.
A kitchen smelling of coffee, of toast. A window open to summer. His mother humming, moving around the counter as if she owned the peace.
Catalina's hands were always busy, always doing something practical and useful. Folding. Stirring. Fixing. Touching his shoulder as she passed as a gentle reminder: you are there, you are safe, you are loved.
His father sat at the table reading the news as if the world couldn't bother him as long as he knew about it first.
Alonso Sinfín was not a loud person. There was no need for him to be. His listeners valued the sound of his voice because he was not a word-waster.
Ortega could see his sister standing in the doorway, aged fifteen and dramatic and only half awake, hair bundled up into a mess, face already set in annoyance at the very thought of mornings.
Sofia Sinfín let out a good yawn and added, "If you talk to me before my mind loads, I'm going to commit a felony."
Catalina smiled as if she were watching a masterpiece. "Good morning too, Sofia."
She placed a plate on the table, and a flicker of her gaze met him from over her shoulder. "Ortega Sinfín, please, take a bite while it's hot."
"I remember having laughed,"
That was the sickest part.
He remembered laughing.
He remembered a world in which aches and pains came with chanting and runes and the word 'thing'.
"I was a man," he said,
He remembered when he was twenty-one and figured that the title of the biggest problem in the world was to pick the wrong future. To pick the wrong college major. To pick the wrong career path. To pick the wrong mate.
"He recalled the fact that he had
Next, a memory slipped into place, because memories always happened to segue into something else when your brain was trying to torture you.
---
There was a girl who had brown eyes and paint on her fingers.
First relationship. Teenage, stupid, sweet in the way only people who hadn't been broken yet could be sweet.
They'd split up because life had moved on and they had not. No infidelity. No deception. Just two teenagers realizing that they were going in separate ways and pretending it wasn't important until it was.
He had walked home that morning feeling hollow, but in one piece.
Second relationship was later, older, heavier.
A girl who wanted the certainty. A girl who wanted him to promise the future as if he owned the world.
Distance. Not the dramatic kind. Just the quiet kind.
Calls that shortened. Visits that dwindled. The painful recognition that love wasn't a sufficient component if there wasn't an adequate package left to accommodate it.
"The third relationship was the most difficult because it was one of anger."
Not screaming. Not cruelty.
Just the kind of disappointment that lingered in your mouth like ash.
"You're good, Ortega. You're safe," she'd said. "But you live like you're waiting for something to happen."
He looked back then. He
"What's wrong with safe?" He'd said that.
"She'd looked at him as if he didn't understand the question," he explained to Phaed
Perhaps he hadn't.
Now he was chained in a basement, in a world where safety was merely a rumor, and he couldn't shake the thought of how foolishly arrogant his previous life had been.
Ortega opened his eyes again.
To my surprise,
The ceiling
"The cage was still humming."
And the woman's voice echoed from beyond the bars, muffled but insistent. "He's not sleeping."
'"Ortega didn't move"
Another voice chimed in, the tired one, the one that sounded like she'd been battling and just kept on coming. "He doesn't need sleep right now. Not like we do."
"A pause. The click of a pen," she said. "
"What does he want?" the stern voice demanded.
"Answers," the tired woman repeated. "And so do we."
Ortega turned his head marginally. The rattling of his chains was no louder than the faintest rustle of stone on stone.
Now he could see them behind the bars.
The tired woman stood nearest. She wasn't wearing a hood anymore. Her dark hair streaked with gray is pulled back. Her eyes were that particular kind of steady that wasn't natural, that steadiness that comes from someone realizing that panic is a luxury.
The old man loomed behind her, folded arms as if his body was defending itself by turning to stone.
And there was also this curly-haired witch from earlier leaning on a table, her papers out and candlelight dancing on her ink.
Ortega's eyes locked on the documents.
Not sigils.
The letterhead.
Three meeting triangles embossed very lightly on the paper, like a watermark with delusions of anonymity.
A logo.
A brand.
Ortega did not know why his brain acknowledged it. He did not recall it being in this world either.
But something inside him did.
The tired woman noticed that he was paying attention to everything that
Her eyes tracked his gaze, then cut back to his, and for an instant a look of regret flitted across her features.
Just a flicker.
Then it was gone.
"Don't," she said quietly, more to the others than to him. "Not yet."
"We're still playing as if he doesn't comprehend what he sees," sneered the elderly man.
But Ortega maintained a stoic expression.
His mind was in knots inside.
A logo symbolized organization. Organization equaled funding. Funding equaled purpose. Purpose equaled this wasn't some random coven posing as scientist in the woods.
This was intentional.
"And if this was a plan, then Ortega's presence here definitely was not a coincidence."
Soft, mechanical buzzing emanated from the table. The curly-haired witch was examining a phone, her expression clouding.
"Field update," she said. "The school is moving."
"Already?" said the older man, turning his head suddenly.
"The world pinged," she said. "Saltzman's going off-campus. Mikaelson is with him,"
Ortega's pulse quickened
HOPE
The name dropped into his chest with the weight of a stone.
The name weighed heavily in
He did not allow his face to change, but his body betrayed him anyway. The chains grew warm. The runes pulsed a response, as if a warning: "don't."
The woman's tired eyes narrowed. She was observing him as if she was reading a book that she did not want to finish.
"So he does react," she murmured.
The older man's face contorted. "To her," his voice
His throat constricted.
He didn't know what he was in the world.
However, he knew who Hope Mikaelson was.
And the fact that these witches were aware of where she was, what she was doing, when she moved.
"That wasn't chance."
That was surveillance.
Ortega fixed his gaze on the weary-looking woman until she looked back at him.
"She held the look," he said
And then she whispered, barely audibly, "We are not your enemies, Ortega."
The way she pronounced his name made his skin crawl.
Not because she got it right.
Because she got it as if she knew it all along.
---
Atlanta – Catholic Church
Late afternoon
The air in Atlanta was more dense than in Mystic Falls, full of warmth and urban sounds. Hope sat back in their seat, resting their head against it and observing buildings whizzing by.
Alaric checked his mirrors twice more than he needed.
Alaric
"You're tense," Hope said.
"I'm alive." Alaric replied. "It's the same thing
They drove into a parking lot next to a Catholic church that was clearly too ancient to be from this neighborhood.
Stone walls, dark windows, a structure intended for confessions.
Hope's gaze darted to the chained doors at the entrance.
Alaric turned off the engine. "Let's go in quietly. Let's don't scare him."
Hope's mouth twitched. "Because werewolves adore calm."
"Hope," Alaric shot back, his eyes narrowing
"Fine," said Hope, opening her door.
"She stepped out and immediately felt it."
The sky looked odd
Not exactly magic.
A sort of pressure. A sort of storms gathering and about to erupt.
Alaric locked the SUV and they walked towards the church.
That is when Hope saw him.
A boy with his headphones on, notebook resting on his knee, leaning on the stairs off to the side of the room. Dark hair sweeping into his eyes, furrowed brow suggesting he had learned young to protect himself because safety wasn't issued freely.
Landon Kirby.
His head swung up at the sound of their footsteps, and he froze.
"Sil, Foroli"
Hope felt her stomach plummet with an acceleration that was almost laughable.
Because of course.
"Of course, he was here," said the
Landon's eyes darted to Alaric, then back to Hope, and something like recognition flashed across his features. Not certainty, not yet, but the click of a memory falling into place.
Hope's face flattened. She gave him nothing.
Landon pulled out one earbud. "Uh, hi," he
"Hope didn't answer,"
Alaric slowed down, his eyes swapping between them. "You know him," he said low.
"Barely," Hope never took her eyes off of Landon.
There was a hesitance to Landon's smile. "We met. Once.
"Are you here with Rafael?" Alaric's jaw had clamped shut as if he had mentally anticipated that this was going to be one long day at the office. Rachel frowned, surprised that
"Yeah," hesitated Landon, smiling to conceal his concern,
Hope's eyes narrowed. "Foster parents,"
Landon's shoulders inched upwards. "Apparently
Alaric's face tightened. "Rafael doesn't want to be adopted?"
Landon's laugh was sharp and mean. "He doesn't want to be whatever others want him to be," Rafael said.
Hope sensed that was too close to home.
Alaric moved forward, tone lowered, professional composure in place. "Landon, right? I'm Alaric Saltzman
Landon looked at Hope once more, as if to check whether she was about to strike him with her gaze.
"Hope managed to keep a straight face. It wasn't easy."
"Okay," Landon said slowly. "Do you go to some kind of… private school?"
Alaric was unmoved. "Something like that."
Hope fixed on Landon's hands. They were steady, but his fingers were tapping a rhythym on the edge of his notebook as if to keep himself grounded.
"You shouldn't be here," Hope whispered.
"You mean, like, the church? Or Atlanta?" Landon frowned.
Hope didn't answer.
His eyes drifted over to the doors. The chains circling them weren't exactly discreet. These chains had function, purpose. They were ancient, thick, obvious.
A spark of irritation flashed through Hope. This was more than some boy "meeting foster parents." It was a set-up.
Alaric moved up to stand in front of the doors, his eyes scanning the lock and chain as if reading a message.
Hope raised her hand very subtly, and the sensation of magic thrumming beneath her skin caused her
Alaric looked at her. "Wait,"
Hope's eyes narrowed. "You brought me."
Alaric let out a breath. "Fine
Hope-oriented. The lock didn't "break." It didn't shatter into a thousand fragments, exploding outward as the pressure came to a head and released with a shattering noise. It merely yielded, with a clicking of metal as if it suddenly recalled it
The chain slackened.
Landon gaped at her hand like his brain just encountered a virus error message.
Hope did not look at him.
Alaric pushed the doors open.
The air inside was colder.
Candlelight danced along the walls, far too many for a church service. The smell of incense was thick enough to conceal blood.
Hope entered and touched it.
A werewolf on the boundary of the transformation.
Fear. Anger. Pain
Rafael.
And three humans in the area with something else in them, something was wrong with them. Not witches, per se, but. affected by magic. As if they'd borrowed it. As if they'd been using it.
Alaric's voice was raised ever so slightly. "Raf"
A young man in the center aisle raised his head sharply, his eyes wide and his body trembling with a contained fury.
Opposite him stood a couple who seemed to be struggling to smile through their fear. And a priest whose hands were far too steady.
Hope's gaze locked on Rafael.
For a beat, she saw what was about to occur. The shift. The snap.
"The part where you run." This seems to
Rafael's breathing stalled. His eyes turned yellow.
Hope acted without thinking.
Alaric had too.
Landon moved into the doorway behind them with confusion etched on his face.
Hope locked eyes with him for a moment.
Just long enough to know he was going to follow.
Because, apparently, Landon Kirby had very poor survival skills.
But hope turned again to Rafael.
"Rafael," Alaric said, calm but firmly, as if speaking to a student on the verge of hurling a chair. "You're not in trouble. We're here to help you."
Rafael's lip curled up. "You don't even know me."
Hope felt the magic ripple beneath her skin, a familiar buzz. "We know what you are," she said quietly.
And that punch. Rafael's eyes went wide, and for a moment, a glimmer of fear showed through the anger.
"You don't have to do this alone," Hope offered, tempering her tone ever so slightly.
Rafael's throat constricted. He looked as if he wanted to believe her but hated that about himself.
After which, the pressure in the room escalated.
Rafael doubled over, a gagging noise ripping from him. Bones moving. Skin stretching.
Alaric moved in.
"Hope's magic flared, a spell she'd done so many times it was like breathing. Sleep. Stillness. Forced pause," it said.
"Come on, Ben," she
Rafael's eyelids flickered
"It's ideal weather for gardening;
Hope pressed harder, her jaw set. The spell was caught, just barely.
Rafael slumped.
Alaric was there with the chains, moving as if he'd rehearsed it all too often for a man who was still so emphatic about being "just human."
Landon's voice cracked from the doorway. "What the hell is happening?"
Hope didn't look at him.
She couldn't afford to.
As if something within her chest had begun to pull, a odd tug of a thread.
- It's not from Rafael
Of other origins.
Somewhere north.
Like something was awakening and shouting into the world with a voice that only it could hear.
Hope's hands trembled once, just once, until she compelled them to stop.
Alaric finished tying up Rafael and looked up, noticing the change in her expression.
"What is it?" he asked quietly.
"Nothing," Hope swallowed.
Alaric did not believe it either
Landon did what all humans did when they entered a supernatural scenario—stood there staring as if the more they stared, the more they'd understand what was going on.
Hope finally turned to meet his gaze.
He looked at the chains. At the chains on her hands. At Rafael. At the candles. At the fact that she had just milfed reality.
"You're …" he
"Not your problem." Hope's voice was flat.
Landon's laugh was gasping and increduile. "That's not how problems are."
Hope moved towards him, close enough so that she could speak softly but still sharply. "You weren't supposed to be a part of this."
Landon's eyes flickered. '
Alaric materialized at Hope's side, a barricade in his own right. "Landon, you need to go
Landon looked beyond him at Rafael, who was chained and unconscious.
"I'm not leaving him," said Landon.
"That's not negotiable," Alaric said,
Landon's fists clenched. "He's my brother," he said.
Hope experienced a queasy sensation in her chest.
"I hate the way that sounds so familiar," she said.
Alaric held Landon's gaze for a long beat, and then exhaled through his nose, as if he was losing an argument with fate.
"Fine," Alaric growled. "You stay with us. But you do exactly what I say."
Hope turned her head abruptly to stare at the attacker. "Ric
Alaric did not turn to her. "Hope, we are not leaving a human child alone in a place filled with magical difficulties. He's seen too much as it is."
Hope's jaw clenched.
It seemed like Landon had something he wanted to get off of his chest, something annoyingly brave no doubt.
"Hope didn't give him the chance."
"Get in the car," she said.
Landon blinked. 'What
"Now."
Hope's eyes
"Yes, Kaida." "
Alaric moved in closer to Hope. "We'll handle it."
"Hope didn't answer,"
As she could still feel the string tugging her north.
But for some inexplicable reason on her part, it didn't feel as if the monster was awakening.
A person was imprisoned inside a cage, holding their breath, waiting for someone to appear.
---
Unmarked Property – North Woods
Twilight
Ortega's memories did not end with those from the kitchen.
They came in pieces now, torn away by the press of the thoughts and the fear and whatever the runes were doing to keep him "stable."
"He vividly remembered himself at twenty-one years old, standing in a doorway, backpack on, and a stupid confidence that the world was something you could negotiate with."
"For a brief instant, a picture formed: his twenty-one-year-old self,
A memory surfaced of Sofia thrusting her phone at him and telling him to pick a filter for her picture.
"You can be happy, Ortega. You just can't be careless."
He remembered his father telling him these words.
"He remembered his mother's kisses on his forehead, as if she was blessing him into protection." Patrik Ekestrand, *Kill
And then the memory twisted into something new.
Because the cage did not just contain him.
"Oh, Lord," he
Ortega felt the vampire hunger occasionally, as if a cold mouth yawned within his chest. He felt the wolf anger, hot and swift. And he felt the magic, bright and sparky, running through his veins as if the world were short-circuited and his wires were alive.
He could feel 'this world' inside of him now.
And it seemed like a burglary.
A muffled sound emerged from beyond the bars.
The tired woman again.
She drew nearer, her hand grasping something. A small folder. A picture lodged inside.
Ortega watched her. Did not move.
She pushed the photo through a gap between the bars at the bottom of the cage as though putting food out for a pet.
The paper came to rest on the stone beside his hand.
It did not come within his reach immediately.
Because to reach meant admitting he cared.
Because to care for them means to give them a handle to
The woman did not say anything.
She simply stood, looking at him, waiting.
Ortega slowly raised his fingers. The cuffs dug into his flesh. The runes vibrated.
He pulled the photo towards him.
A grainy security camera photo. Nighttime. A girl on a school's front steps under a streetlight. Hoodie flipped up. Hair pulled back. Head tilted as if she sensed something lurking in the darkness.
Hope Mikaelson
Ortega's throat tightened.
He looked up suddenly.
The older man is there as well, behind the tired woman, staring at Ortega as if he'd just confirmed a hypothesis.
"See?" the old man muttered. "Reaction confirmed."
"Put it away," the tired woman said, clamping her lips together as
Ortega's voice was husky, rusty from disuse. "Why do you have that?"
The room was silent.
The older man smiled unsympathetically. "It speaks," he said
Ortega fixed the tired woman. "Answer me."
Her eyes locked on his. "Because she's going to come looking," she said softly. "And when she does, we need to know if you'll rip her apart or fall at her feet."
His jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth ached.
"You can't talk about her like she's bait," he said.
"You don't talk as if you're the one in charge of something," said the old man, before taking a step forward and flashing with anger.
Ortega felt his wolf emerge, a growl thrumming in his chest.
There was an immediate answer from the runes
The pain lashed through him like a whip. Muscles seized. Vision blurred.
He gritted his teeth and pushed it back down.
He tried to swallow what he had
The tired woman raised a hand, and the pain lessened, but it wasn't gone; it had loosened so that she could breathe.
Ortega stared at her, shaking.
"You're controlling it," he rasped.
She did not deny it.
"That's why we need you calm," she said.
His laugh was rough. "You mean obedient."
Again, the expression of the tired woman flickered, that same almost-regret.
"No," she said. "Alive
Again, he lowered his gaze to the photo.
Hope, blind, surrounded by lamp light.
He pictured her in his mind, her story a festering wound: abandoned, taking her pain as if it was her responsibility, always saying goodbye to those she was trying to hold on to.
He recalled how he thought that when he first woke up into the world, he had one specific objective.
To not become a weapon.
Not to be a problem.
To change one thing.
To ensure that she was not alone in this action.
Ortega looked up again, his tone calm. "Who are you?"
The old man's smile came back, thin and pleased-looking, as if he'd been expecting this question all along.
Answered the tired woman first. Her voice was milder than the room.
"We're the ones that clean up after the messes that the Salvatore School can't," said Rosales.
Ortega's eyes darted again to the papers on the table. The watermark. The three triangles.
A brand as a signifier.
Ortega's stomach turned.
He didn't have the whole picture.
But he had enough to know the outline of it.
"Triad," he said softly.
The old man's eyes narrowed. The curly-haired witch froze.
The tired woman didn't respond.
Which was reaction enough.
Note: When
Ortega breathed in slowly.
Thus, this was not a basement ritual.
It was a project.
Just like how there were goals, there were also
Ortega gazed at the picture of Hope on the monument, then at the worn-out woman.
"If she comes," he said, his voice flat with promise, "you better pray your cage holds."
The elderly man scoffed. "Threats already?" Ortega didn't take his eyes away from the worn woman. "Not a threat," he said. "A fact." Because if Hope Mikaelson came into this, they'd either try to use her.
Where are you going? Come Either they'd want to be with her.
Or And Ortega wasn't bothered by what he needed to turn into to prevent all this. The tired woman watched him for a beat before reaching up and slowly picking the photograph back up from the stone, very gently, making sure not to touch his hand. "Then we should all be very careful," she said. And meanwhile, far away, in another moving SUV, Hope Jarreau could feel this invisible thread tug at her again, more pointedly now, as though something had finally caught her attention to it. Not a monster. Not a spell. A person. Waiting. Catching their breath. And measuring the miles in between.