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Chapter 6 - Chapter Six: The Morning That Bleeds Memory

"And he said, 'What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to Me from the ground.'"

 

— Genesis 4:10 (NKJV)

 

Time: 5:17 AM

Location: Thalia's Apartment, Bloomsbury

 

The dream was made of ash and screaming.

 

Thalia stood in a field of withered earth — endless, broken soil beneath a sky that never fully lightened. Faces surrounded her. Not

real ones — not alive ones — but ghost faces: blurred, cracked like old photographs soaked in vinegar.

 

They whispered.

 

They wept.

 

They called her name, even when they couldn't remember who they were.

 

"Murderer."

"Bearer."

"You were the last."

 

Thalia tried to back away, but her feet sank into the earth. It wasn't mud. It was bones. Thousands of them. As she looked down,

the soil writhed. Hands emerged — small, large, charred, rotten — all reaching upward.

 

Clutching.

 

Dragging.

 

"Give it back."

"We were forgotten."

"You carry our screams."

 

A child's voice cut through the others. It was a

whisper, but it slammed through her skull like thunder.

 

"You killed us."

 

"I didn't!" Thalia cried, clutching her head. "I

don't even know you—"

 

"Exactly."

 

Then silence.

 

Except for one sound — a soft drip.

 

Thalia looked up.

 

The sky above cracked like glass, and from it poured blood. Not in torrents. Just

steady, rhythmic drops. Each one landing with a name.

 

One drop: Aline of Carthage.

Two: Bastien, son of Bastien.

Three: Rebekah of Acre.

Four: Thalia.

 

Her name.

 

In her own voice.

 

The blood hit her face — hot and ancient — and as it touched her skin, memory rushed in

like floodwater.

 

A woman burning at the stake, clutching a dagger as she whispers a prayer in Old French.

 

A knight impaled through the chest, smiling with relief as he dies and passes the curse to his killer.

 

A slave girl with gold eyes standing in a temple, surrounded by corpses — weeping as her chains dissolve.

 

A man in Victorian London writing his name in blood over and over again before drinking poison, whispering, "Forget me."

 

A scream caught in her throat before she fully woke.

 

Thalia jolted upright, tangled in sweat-damp sheets, heart pounding as if she'd run a marathon through broken time. For a breathless moment, the shadows of her dream clung to her skin — ashes and fire, a child crying for mercy, and voices whispering her name with blood-wet mouths.

 

"Avenge me."

"You bear our sin."

"You wear his curse."

"You killed us."

 

She sat up in bed, chest heaving, soaked in sweat. The early light was barely leaking through the blinds, pale and cold.

 

The room was still.

 

The world was real again.

 

But the dream — no, the memory — clung to her like oil.

 

A boy weeping over his brother's corpse.

A woman burned alive, clutching a blade with utrembling hands.

A child screaming for mercy while shadows dragged her into nothing

 

Thalia exhaled sharply, pressing trembling fingers to her forehead. The dream was fading — as they always did — but fragments clung like blood beneath her nails.

 

Her hand trembled as she reached for her phone.

 

4:56 AM.

 

Thalia drew her knees to her chest, curling into the fading warmth of the sheets, trying to convince herself she was still in her

room. Still in London. Still in 2025.

Still just… a girl.

 

But she wasn't. Not anymore.

 

The room around her was dim, the dawn light a pale bruise against the blinds. She sat there for a moment longer, listening — not for sounds, but for silence. The silence that always followed the dreams. A silence she'd grown to fear more than noise.

 

Then: a knock on the wall.

 

"Thal?" Jazz's voice was muffled, but close. "Did you scream or was that just the sound of existential dread again?"

 

Thalia forced herself to reply, voice hoarse. "Just a dream."

 

Jazz was silent for a beat. "Was it the same one?"

 

Thalia hesitated. "Yeah. Worse this time."

 

Jazz didn't pry. She never did. "I'll make tea.

You've got class in an hour."

 

"Thanks."

 

She stayed curled there for a minute longer,

listening to Jazz clatter around the kitchenette. The smell of ginger and honey

crept through the door like a balm.

 

There were never any wraiths in the morning.

 

Only memories.

 

—————

 

University College London 

Midmorning– Room 2B

 

The Ashcroft Lecture Hall hummed with quiet activity as students filed in — notebooks half-filled, coffees half-drunk, ambitions half-formed. Outside, rain licked the stained-glass windows, casting fractured prisms across the old oak floor.

 

Thalia sat near the window — her usual spot — already settled before most students had even arrived. Her dark sweater was oversized, sleeves tugged over her hands as she scrawled lazy notes in the margin of her notebook. Spirals again. Always spirals.

 

Jazz called them "wraith-echoes."

Thalia called them habit.

 

"—between offering and obedience," Dr. Mycroft was saying at the front, pointer clicking against the slide. "Early rites didn't ask for blood because the gods wanted it. They asked for it because the people believed it worked."

 

Thalia's pen hovered.

 

Belief.

That word always tasted strange.

 

The air shifted beside her.

 

She didn't need to look up — she already knew the weight of his presence. Caleb

Moreau. He always arrived two minutes late and smelled faintly of old books and clean

soap. Somehow both timeless and present, like a relic that still pulsed.

 

"Morning," he whispered, sliding into the seat beside her. Close, but never touching. Always

respectful. Always… aware.

 

"Morning," she murmured back, lips barely moving.

 

"You okay? You looked a little out of it."

 

She nodded, but didn't meet his eyes. "Didn't sleep well."

 

"Nightmares?"

 

She didn't answer. Not directly. But her silence said enough.

 

Caleb leaned slightly, voice soft. "You know… if you ever want to talk about it, I'm a great

listener. I specialize in brooding historical trauma."

 

That earned a ghost of a smile from her. "And here I thought you were a history major, not a

therapist."

 

He chuckled. "Dual specialization."

 

She almost said something else. Something true. But instead, she scribbled a line across her page, breaking the moment like a matchstick.

 

That was the way it always was — warmth at the edge of something deeper. And Thalia never let it cross the line.

 

Not because she didn't want to.

 

But because people who got too close to her… paid for it.

 

Before Caleb could press further, a new voice cut across the space behind them — high, sweet, and sugar-poisoned.

 

"Caleb."

 

Cassandra DuVere. Her heels clicked against the floor like punctuation marks. She stopped just behind him, designer bag slung over one arm, lips lacquered into a tight, polite smile.

 

Caleb didn't turn. "Hey, Cassandra."

 

"I didn't see you at the advisory brunch yesterday. Dean Hawthorne asked about you." She leaned forward a little too far. "You know how he gets when the Moreaus don't make a showing."

 

"I had class," Caleb replied, tone flat but polite. His eyes didn't leave Thalia's page.

 

Cassandra's smile pinched. "Right. Of course. Well—" she cast a glance at Thalia that felt like a dry blade "—if you ever need someone to help you… catch up on your duties, I'd be happy to assist."

 

Caleb's only response was a half-humored hum. Barely a syllable. No gratitude. No

invitation.

 

Cassandra lingered for another beat, waiting for acknowledgment that didn't come. Then she turned sharply and walked off, the perfume she wore trailing behind like false spring.

 

Thalia arched a brow. "She always this subtle?"

 

Caleb finally smiled, his voice low. "She's campaigning. I'm just not voting."

 

The bell rang. Students shuffled out.

 

Caleb lingered, glancing at Thalia. "You free after class?"

 

She hesitated. "Maybe. Why?"

 

"There's a guest lecture next week. Dr. Verity's doing that talk on medieval visions. Thought of you."

 

That surprised her more than she let on.

 

"I'll think about it."

 

"Cool," he said, standing. "No pressure."

 

And he walked away —no backward glance, no awkward pause — just trust in the rhythm they'd built between them.

 

Thalia watched him go, a small ache settling behind her ribs.

 

Jazz once joked they were the slowest non-couple in recorded history.

 

And sometimes… it felt true.

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