Lily Hayes POV

  Everyone at Silverpeak thinks I’m ordinary.

  That’s how I’ve survived here for the past three years by blending in, keeping my head down, and never giving anyone a reason to look twice.

  I’m the quiet girl at the back of the class.

  The one who always has a book in her hands and earbuds in her ears. The one who doesn’t belong here, not really.

  Silverpeak Academy was built into the side of a mist-wrapped mountain, tucked so far from civilization that it might as well be its own realm.

  The academy was elite, mysterious, and full of secrets I never thought I’d care about it, until they started to involve me.

  It began three weeks ago.

  The dreams came first.

  They weren’t just your typical stress nightmares. No, these were... different. Vivid. Otherworldly.

  A battlefield, always soaked in silver moonlight and blood. A cold wind that carried screams.

  A castle crumbling into fire. And at the center of it all, a man cloaked in shadow, watching me like I was the last light in a dying world.

  I never saw his face until last night.

  And now I can’t forget it.

  I shouldn’t know his name. But I do.

  Malakar.

  The name settles in my chest like thunder before a storm. Wrong and right, all at once.

  I woke up the next morning before my alarm rings, my heart racing and my throat sour from screaming.

  I noticed the window beside my bed was wide open, but I knew I closed it the night before.

  And on the windowsill… a single black feather, wet with dew and pulsing faintly with something I couldn’t explain.

  It’s probably a joke, right? A trick of the light. A hallucination. At least, that’s what I told myself as I got dressed and made my way to Advanced Mythology.

  But something was already different.

  Whispers followed me down the halls. Not voices. Whispers. Low murmurs curling just beneath the surface of my hearing.

  I looked back to see if someone was there but no one.

  I walked by the old stone fountain by the east tower and heard water splash.

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  Not from wind, not from movement but from me. My reflection split into eight fragments.

  And in one of them, I saw his face.

  Malakar.

  Midnight eyes. A cruel, beautiful mouth. Scars tracing his cheek like lightning. He looked at me like he knew every secret I’d ever buried and every sin I was still meant to commit.

  I stumbled back, heart hammering.

  What was happening to me?

  I tried to shake it off. Made it through half of Professor Haldren’s lecture before my hands started to shake.

  When I reached into my bag for a pen, my fingers closed around something cold. Smooth. Familiar.

  A pendant.

  Silver. Shaped like a crescent moon, strung on a delicate chain I swore wasn’t mine.

  Except… it was.

  The second I touched it, pain bloomed behind my eyes. My vision exploded with light. And for the briefest moment, I wasn’t in the classroom anymore.

  I was standing in a circle of ancient stones, wind roaring, lightning splitting the sky above me.

  Seven others stood around me, some I almost recognized. All of them glowing, pulsing with the same magic thrumming in my veins.

  And him.

  Always him.

  “Lily,” he said, his voice breaking like waves against rock. “You have to remember. Before it’s too late.”

  I blinked and I was back. My pen had rolled off the desk.

  All eyes was on me.

  I excused myself and rushed out of the class before the tears stinging my eyes could fall.

  I ran as fast as I could deliberating whether to go to the dorm, but I didn’t go to the dorms.

  I didn’t stop walking.

  My legs moved on instinct, taking me beyond the west courtyard, past the Moon Garden where dusk flowers bloomed despite the early hour, up the winding cliff path that was always shrouded in fog.

  Something was calling me.

  The mist thickened as I climbed, curling around my body like fingers. My lungs burned. My heart thundered. And then… silence.

  I stepped onto the overlook, a place where no student dared to go. The wind was stronger here. Colder. Hungrier.

  And he was waiting, and it looked real.

  Malakar.

  There he was standing at the cliff’s edge, his coat moving with the wind and his eyes glowing like a molten silver.

  Not a dream this time. Not a memory.

  I froze.

  “You,” I whispered, voice shaking.

  His eyes flicked to me. There was no surprise in them. Just sadness. Recognition.

  I felt a deep ache down my bones.

  "Thank goodness, you're awake” he said softly. “I wasn’t sure you would."

  “Who—” My throat tightened. “Who are you?”

  His lips twitched into a bitter smile. “I am the ghost of your past. The mistake you were destined to correct. The monster the world turned me into.”

  And then, more gently, “I am Malakar. Once your protector. Once your friend. Perhaps… more.”

  My legs trembled.

  But I have clenched my pendant in my fist, hoping that it would be able to calm me down.

  I whispered to myself slowly “You're not supposed to be real, you’re just a dream...”

  “No, you are the dream, Lily.”

  "One I’ve spent centuries waiting to wake.”

  Thunder rolled in the distance and Lightning flashed across the sky.

  And he was gone.

  I felt the truth settle into my skin like a second heartbeat for the first time in my life.

  I wasn’t ordinary.

  I never had been.

  And my story was just beginning.

  I didn’t know that the dream wasn’t just a figment of my imagination, it was a memory.

  Or perhaps… a warning.

  ----------

  I woke up the next morning with a soaked bed sheet and my heart beating like a war drum

  I looked at the window to see if it locked but it wasn't, the room was lit up with the Sun ray and even with how warm the day is, I couldn't shake the chills clinging to my spine.

  I could still hear his voice echoing in my ears.

  “Lily. Remember me.”

  But how could I? I have never seen that man before in my life. Never…

  My hands moved before my thoughts caught up as I sat up and grabbed my sketchbook from my nightstand, the black charcoal streaking across the page.

  A face took form.

  Those dark eyes filled with torment and beneath his right eye is a unmistakable mark and his sharp cheekbones that looks like a crescent moon surrounded by thorns.

  Malakar.

  The name came to me like a whisper from a life I had never lived.