Chapter 2: The Scent of Nightshade

Chapter 2: The Scent of Nightshade

Nyx.

The name echoed in the hollow space where Elara’s thoughts should have been. It was a foreign word that felt horrifyingly familiar, like a melody from a half-forgotten nightmare. She stumbled back, pulling away from the golden-eyed man as if his touch had been a live wire. Her sketchbook lay forgotten on the grass between them.

"I... I don't know who you are," she stammered, the words flimsy and unconvincing even to her own ears.

His smirk widened, a flash of predatory white teeth. "Don't you? Then who drew the picture?" He gestured with his chin toward the sketchbook, to the drawing of him that her own hand had created. "My name is Rowan. And you will remember yours."

Before she could form another denial, he turned and melted back into the flow of students, disappearing as suddenly as he had appeared. He didn't run; he simply moved with a fluid grace that defied the crowd, vanishing from sight in seconds.

Elara was left standing alone, trembling, her skin burning where he’d touched her. She snatched her sketchbook, slammed it shut, and ran. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to get away. The casual chatter of the campus, the laughter of other students, now sounded like a threat, a thin veil over a world of teeth and claws she was just beginning to see.

For the rest of the day, he was everywhere and nowhere.

She would catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye—a flash of a leather jacket disappearing around a corner, a figure leaning against a distant stone wall, watching her with unblinking intensity. Once, she saw his reflection in the glass of the campus coffee shop, standing directly behind her, but when she whirled around, heart leaping into her throat, there was nothing but empty space.

He was stalking her. Hunting her. The campus, her only refuge, had transformed into his personal hunting ground. Every shadow seemed to stretch towards her, every gust of wind felt like his breath on her neck. Her anxiety, once a low hum, had become a screaming siren in her skull. She wasn't just an imposter here anymore; she was prey.

Desperate for sanctuary, she fled to the one place that had always felt safe: the cavernous, hushed halls of the Blackwood University library. It was an old gothic structure, smelling of aging paper and floor polish. Here, surrounded by centuries of documented facts and rational thought, she hoped to starve the burgeoning panic.

She found a secluded carrel in the deepest, dustiest section of the stacks, under the dim glow of a green-shaded lamp. For a while, it worked. The silence was a balm. But she couldn't focus on her art history texts. Rowan's golden eyes were burned into the back of her eyelids. Nyx.

On a desperate whim, she typed the name into the library's mythology database. The results were immediate and chilling. Nyx. The Greek primordial goddess of the night. A figure of immense, shadowy power, so feared that even Zeus himself was wary of her. Mother of dark spirits: Doom, Fate, Death, Sleep, and Deceit.

Elara’s blood ran cold. It was a coincidence. It had to be.

Her hands shaking, she grabbed a heavy tome on rare neurological disorders from a nearby shelf, her mind grasping for a logical explanation. Sudden Onset Savant Syndrome. Fugue States. Poliosis Circumscripta. Medical terms for her symptoms. It was stress. That's all it was. She was cracking under the pressure.

She flipped through the dry, academic pages, her eyes scanning for anything that would anchor her back to reality. And then she saw it.

Tucked between pages describing memory loss was a small, folded piece of thick, cream-colored paper. It wasn't a library bookmark. The paper felt expensive, ancient. Her name, Elara, was written on the outside in elegant, sharp calligraphy.

With trembling fingers, she unfolded it. The message inside was brief, the same ink, the same hand.

The dreams are memories. The scent of nightshade on your soul calls to the monsters. Trust no one.

The book slipped from her numb fingers, thudding onto the desk. This was no prank. This was no hallucination. The note was a confirmation, a key turning a lock in her mind. Someone else knew. Someone else was watching her, someone who wasn't Rowan. The note wasn’t a threat, it felt like a warning. But who was the warning against? Rowan? Or the other monsters it mentioned?

The library no longer felt safe. It felt like a tomb. The high, shadowed ceilings seemed to press down on her, and the rows of books stood like silent, judging monoliths. She had to get out.

She shoved the note into her pocket and fled the stacks, bursting out of the library's heavy oak doors into the falling dusk. The sun had bled below the horizon, painting the sky in bruises of purple and orange. The campus lamps were beginning to flicker on, casting long, distorted shadows that writhed like living things.

Her dorm was across the oldest part of campus, through a garden path notorious for its poor lighting. She usually avoided it at night, but tonight, she couldn't bear the thought of the longer, more open route. She just wanted to be in her room, behind a locked door.

She plunged into the gloom of the garden path, the crunch of gravel under her worn boots unnaturally loud in the evening quiet. The air grew cold, thick with the smell of damp earth and something else… something cloying and sickly sweet. Nightshade.

Two figures detached themselves from the deeper shadows ahead, blocking the path. They were not students. They were gaunt and pale, with unnaturally long limbs and eyes that glowed with a faint, putrid green light. Their movements were jerky, too fast, like puppets on a string.

"There she is," one of them rasped, his voice like grinding stones. "Smell it? The power, just waking up. The Master will be pleased."

The other one grinned, a horrific stretching of thin lips over grey gums. "Just a taste. He'll never know."

Panic, absolute and electrifying, seized Elara. These were the monsters from the note. She spun around to run, but they were on her in an instant, their cold, claw-like hands grabbing at her arms. She screamed, a raw, desperate sound that was swallowed by the night.

And then, silence.

The pressure on her arms vanished. The two figures froze, their heads cocked at an impossible angle. A man stood just behind them, a figure of absolute stillness in the chaotic moment. He hadn't been there a second ago.

He was tall and unnervingly elegant, dressed in a perfectly tailored dark suit that seemed to absorb the twilight. His face was a mask of aristocratic beauty—sharp jawline, pale skin, and eyes the color of silver in the moonlight. He looked at the two creatures holding her not with anger, but with a kind of bored, lethal disappointment.

"The council's decree is clear," the man said, his voice smooth and cold as polished marble. "The neutral ground of the university is not to be used as a feeding trough for ghouls."

Before the creatures could even react, he moved. It wasn’t a blur of motion; it was simpler than that. He was there, and then he was through them. There was no sound of a fight, only two soft, wet thuds as the bodies hit the gravel, dissolving into plumes of black dust that smelled of rot and sulfur.

He stood over the dissipating remains for a moment, brushing an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve. Then, he turned his piercing silver eyes on Elara. They held no warmth, no relief, only a chilling, ancient intelligence that saw right through her. It was a gaze far more terrifying than Rowan's primal heat. This was the cold, calculating regard of a predator that had lived for centuries.

He took a slow, deliberate step towards her, his expensive shoes making no sound on the path. He stopped a few feet away, his expression unreadable.

"The goddess of retribution should not be wandering alone at night," he stated, his voice devoid of emotion. "It is unseemly, Elara."

He knew her name. Her real name. And in the chilling authority of his voice, she understood. This was no random savior. He was another player in this deadly game she didn't understand, another monster drawn to the scent of nightshade on her soul.