Chapter 1: The Girl in the Mirror

Chapter 1: The Girl in the Mirror

The dream always ended in blood and moonlight.

Elara gasped, jolting upright in her narrow dorm bed, the thin sheets twisted around her legs like burial shrouds. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. The images were already dissolving, slipping like sand through her fingers, but the sensations lingered. The metallic tang of blood in the air. The chilling kiss of night wind on bare skin. The scent of pine and damp earth.

And the eyes. Golden, luminous, and filled with a terrifying, possessive fire. They watched her from the dark canvas of her subconscious, belonging to a man whose face she could never quite recall upon waking.

She shoved a hand through her tangled, dark hair, sweat beading on her forehead. It was just a dream. A recurring, violent, nonsensical dream. For weeks they had plagued her, leaving her exhausted and on edge. They were always the same, a kaleidoscope of visceral fragments: the satisfying crunch of bone, the raw power thrumming through her veins, a woman’s laughter that was both cruel and divine. A laugh that felt disturbingly like her own, yet entirely alien.

"Get it together, Elara," she whispered, her voice a raw croak in the pre-dawn quiet of her room. She was a scholarship student at the prestigious Blackwood University. An art history major. She was supposed to be worried about looming deadlines and the crushing weight of her imposter syndrome, not phantom violence in her sleep. Here, among the legacies and old money, she was a ghost, a charity case who got in on talent alone, and she felt it every time she walked the manicured lawns of the campus. The last thing she needed was to look as unhinged as she felt.

Pushing off the covers, she padded to the tiny bathroom connected to her room. The fluorescent light hummed, casting her reflection in a sickly, pale glow. Large, anxious eyes stared back at her from a face that looked too young, too soft for the brutality of her nightmares. She wore her anxiety like her favorite oversized pastel sweater—a comfortable, protective layer to hide behind.

She splashed cold water on her face, the shock of it a welcome anchor to reality. Water dripped from her chin as she looked up again, her gaze snagging on her hair. She froze.

There, nestled amongst the dark, wavy locks just above her right temple, was a streak of white. Not grey, not a sun-bleached highlight, but a stark, shocking white, as pure and unnatural as a bone shard. It hadn't been there yesterday. She was certain of it. Her fingers, trembling slightly, traced the alien strand. It felt just like the rest of her hair, but it seemed to hum with a strange, cold energy against her skin.

Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through her. What was this? A side effect of stress? Some bizarre, freak genetic mutation? The white streak felt like a brand, a physical manifestation of the wrongness that had taken root in her mind. Her first instinct was to grab the scissors from her art kit. Cut it out. Erase the evidence.

But the thought of the scissors, the sharp glint of steel, sent an unwelcome echo of her dream ricocheting through her mind—the glint of moonlight on something sharp, something deadly. She recoiled, her hand dropping from her hair. She couldn't cut it. Instead, she did what she always did when faced with something she couldn't control: she hid it. With shaking hands, she re-parted her hair, carefully arranging the dark waves to conceal the offending white. Out of sight, out of mind. A futile mantra, but the only one she had.

Dressed in a lilac sweater that swallowed her small frame and worn jeans, Elara fled her room. The lecture hall was her sanctuary, a place of structure and facts, a world away from the chaos of her dreams. She slipped into a seat in the back row, pulling out her sketchbook and charcoal pencils. The low murmur of other students filled the amphitheater, their casual confidence and expensive clothes a stark contrast to her own frayed existence. They talked about weekend trips to Aspen and summering in the Hamptons. Elara had spent her summer working double shifts at a diner to save up for art supplies.

Professor Alistair drone on about the chiaroscuro techniques of the Baroque period, but his voice was a distant buzz. Elara tried to focus, to sketch the copy of Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes projected on the screen, but her hand had a mind of its own. The charcoal whispered across the page, not forming the dramatic lines of the painting, but something else. Something from the dream.

A forest of tall, menacing pines took shape under her fingers. A full moon, impossibly large, hung in the sky. And in the foreground, the faint outline of a man. She didn't consciously draw him, but her muscles remembered. Broad shoulders, a wild mane of hair, and a predatory stance. She focused on the face, trying to capture the phantom from her nightmares, but it remained frustratingly blank. All she could render were the eyes. She pressed the charcoal down, harder and harder, creating two burning, golden orbs that stared out from the page with raw intensity.

A shudder wracked her body. She slammed the sketchbook shut, her heart pounding again. The drawing felt dangerous, like a summons.

When the lecture finally ended, Elara practically bolted from the hall, desperate for fresh air. She cut across the main quad, clutching her sketchbook to her chest like a shield. The autumn air was crisp, and students milled about, laughing and chatting, their lives so blessedly normal. All Elara wanted was a piece of that. A single day without the encroaching shadows.

She was so lost in her thoughts, so focused on putting one foot in front of the other, that she didn't see him until it was too late. She rounded a large oak tree and walked straight into a solid wall of muscle.

"Oof—" The impact knocked the wind out of her, sending her sketchbook tumbling to the ground, its pages fluttering open.

"Whoa, watch it," a low, gravelly voice rumbled.

Strong hands gripped her upper arms to steady her. The touch was electric, a jolt of pure energy that shot straight through her sweater. Her head snapped up, and her breath caught in her throat.

It was him.

The man from her dream. The man from her drawing.

He was even more intimidating in the flesh. Taller than she’d imagined, with wild, untamed dark hair that brushed his shoulders and a rugged face that looked like it had been carved from granite. He wore a worn leather jacket and faded jeans, a stark contrast to the preppy aesthetic of most Blackwood students. But it was his eyes that stole the air from her lungs. They were a stunning, impossible shade of gold, burning with the same fierce intensity that haunted her dreams. And they were fixed on her with a shocking, unnerving familiarity.

He released her arms and bent down, scooping up her sketchbook. He glanced at the open page—the drawing of the moonlit forest, of him. A slow, dangerous smirk tugged at his lips.

"So you do remember," he said, his voice a low purr that vibrated through her bones.

Elara could only stare, her mind a screaming void. How? How was he real?

He took a step closer, crowding her space, his scent overwhelming her—pine, leather, and something else, something primal and wild. He reached out, his calloused thumb brushing against her temple, expertly pushing aside the dark hair she had so carefully arranged. His touch was a brand of fire on her skin.

He exposed the white streak to the afternoon sun. His golden eyes darkened with a possessive heat that made her skin crawl.

"There you are," he murmured, his voice dropping to a husky whisper that was meant for her ears alone. "I've been looking for you, Nyx."