The closer I got to my apartment building, each step through the deserted streets under the cold, indifferent gaze of the streetlights felt like wading through thick, viscous dread. The familiar shapes of the parked cars, the muted glow from a few te-night windows, usually a source of a strange, detached comfort, now loomed like silent witnesses to my impending emotional implosion. My mother’s anger was a well-charted territory of icy disapproval and cutting remarks, but the circumstances of my abrupt departure and inevitable return felt like they would unleash a storm of unprecedented ferocity, fueled by her deep-seated fear of scandal and judgment.

  I slipped my key into the lock of the building’s front door, the small click echoing with unnerving loudness in the pre-dawn stillness. Each creak of the worn stairs as I climbed to the third floor was a physical manifestation of the growing weight in my chest, each step bringing me closer to the confrontation I desperately wanted to avoid. My apartment door felt alien beneath my fingertips. I fumbled with the lock, my hands trembling slightly, a desperate, futile hope flickering within me that my mother might somehow be asleep, oblivious to my return, allowing me to snatch the remnants of my old life and vanish again into the anonymity of the city before the inevitable explosion.

  That fragile hope shattered the moment the door creaked inward. My mother stood in the hallway, a stark, unyielding figure in her pale nightgown, her silhouette framed by the dim light spilling from the living room. Her face, usually a carefully composed mask of weary patience, was contorted into a rigid tableau of fury, her lips pressed so tightly together they had lost all colour.

  “Luna.” Her voice was low, dangerously controlled, each sylble ced with a barely contained rage that vibrated in the still air. “Do you have any idea what time it is? Do you have any sembnce of consideration for the worry you have caused?”

  My stomach plummeted, a cold, sickening lurch. The fight had begun before a single real word had even been spoken. “I… I needed to get some things.” My voice was small, almost a whisper, the ingrained habit of shrinking under her disapproval instinctively silencing me, making me feel like a child caught in a forbidden act.

  “Needed? Needed to slink back in here like some common thief in the dead of night?” Her eyes, usually critical, were now sharp and accusatory, piercing through my fragile defenses. “Where in God’s name have you been? Don’t think for one minute that I haven’t been lying awake, imagining every single sordid possibility.” The venom in her tone, the immediate assumption of the worst, began to prick at the edges of my carefully constructed composure, stirring the simmering resentment within me.

  “The worst?” I repeated softly, my gaze fixed on the worn carpet, still unwilling to meet the full force of her anger.

  “Yes, the worst!” she spat, taking a deliberate step closer, her voice rising with each word. “A girl your age, disappearing for hours, out all night without a word? Alone? What kind of reputation do you think you’re building for yourself? What will the neighbours say? Mrs. Henderson saw you leaving te st night, you know. What am I supposed to tell her?” Her concern, as always, revolved around the suffocating constraints of societal expectations, the fragile image of our perfect, normal family that I constantly threatened to shatter.

  Each word was a carefully aimed sh, tearing away at the remnants of my meekness and fanning the slow burn of anger that had been smoldering within me for years. “What about what I want?” The question finally escaped my lips, a low murmur of long-suppressed rebellion, surprising even myself with its quiet defiance.

  “What you want?” Her ugh was sharp, brittle, and utterly dismissive, devoid of any warmth or understanding. “Since when has what you want ever been a priority? You think you can just disrupt everything, cause untold worry and specution…”

  “Worry?” The word felt like a foreign, mocking sound on her lips. “You weren’t worried about me, Mother. You were worried about the gossip, about the raised eyebrows and whispered judgments. You were worried about yourself.” The dam of years of unspoken resentment, of feeling like an unwanted burden, began to crack under the pressure of the night’s bizarre and terrifying events.

  “Don’t you dare speak to me in that insolent tone!” Her face contorted with a fury I had rarely witnessed, a raw, untamed rage that made her features almost unrecognizable. “I am your mother, and you will show me some respect! After everything I’ve done for you…”

  “Respect?” The word tasted like bitter ash on my tongue. “Respect is earned, Mother. And you haven’t earned mine for a very long time.” The anger surged, a potent cocktail of exhaustion and fear, giving me a sudden, reckless courage I rarely possessed in her presence. “You’ve never loved me. Not really. I’ve always felt it, this… distance. Like I was an outsider looking in, tolerated at best, a constant disappointment.”

  My mother’s face paled, the anger momentarily receding, repced by a fleeting flicker of something unexpected – a raw, unguarded pain that vanished as quickly as it appeared, masked once more by a renewed wave of defensive rage. “That’s a vicious lie! I have always provided for you, clothed you, fed you, cared for you…”

  “Provided? Cared?” My voice shook, raw with the accumuted weight of years of feeling emotionally starved. “You provided the bare minimum, Mother. The necessities. But caring? That was an act. A performance you put on for Father, for the neighbours, for the endless stream of your perfect little friends. But behind closed doors…” The words caught in my throat, the suffocating weight of a lifetime of feeling unloved and unwanted choking me.

  “Oh, you poor, dramatic thing,” she sneered, but the usual sharp edge of her voice was slightly dulled, a tremor of something akin to unease beneath the surface. “Always the victim, always exaggerating.”

  “Victim?” I finally lifted my gaze to meet hers, my own eyes burning with unshed tears and the accumuted pain of a lifetime of feeling like an alien in my own home. “Yes! I was a victim of your coldness, your constant criticism, your barely concealed resentment! And I never understood why. Why you always looked at me with such… hatred.” I turned to my father, who had finally emerged fully into the hallway, his face a mask of drawn anguish, his eyes wide with a silent plea. “Why, Father? Did you ever truly love me? Were those few early moments of… connection… real? Or was it all just a lie too?” His silence was a deafening, heartbreaking confirmation of my deepest, most painful fears.

  My mother’s carefully constructed composure finally shattered, the years of buried resentment and unspoken bitterness erupting in a torrent of raw emotion. “Because you’re not mine!” she shrieked, her voice cracking, hysteria cing her words. “You’re not really my daughter, Luna! You’re his… his mistake! His little secret that I’ve had to live with, to swallow down, all these miserable years!”

  The words smmed into me with the force of a physical blow, each sylble a brutal, shattering impact. Not hers? His mistake? My father? The world seemed to tilt precariously on its axis, the familiar hallway warping and distorting around me. Suddenly, the pieces of a lifelong, agonizing puzzle clicked into pce with a sickening finality, each one a sharp, jagged shard of pain. The coldness, the resentment, the inexplicable distance… it wasn’t about me. It was about him. About my very existence being a constant, painful reminder of a betrayal.

  The emotional turmoil was a violent, visceral shock, a raw wound tearing open inside me, flooding me with a dizzying mix of grief, confusion, and a terrifying, dawning understanding. My hands began to tremble uncontrolbly, the familiar, votile energy surging beneath my skin, hotter, more chaotic than ever before. The air around me crackled with an unseen force, the shadows in the hallway deepening and swirling like a gathering storm. I was losing control again, the raw power threatening to erupt in a destructive wave.

  Just then, a deeper shadow detached itself from the already dim recesses of the hallway. Sis. He moved with a speed that defied human perception, a silent, fluid motion that seemed to bend the very fabric of reality. His intense violet eyes were locked on mine, his expression unreadable yet somehow… urgent. Before my mother or father could even register his impossible appearance, the familiar hallway dissolved into a sickening, disorienting vortex of swirling, impenetrable shadows. We were gone, hurtling through a darkness that felt both terrifyingly alien and strangely, instinctively familiar, a journey of impossible speed through a realm I couldn’t comprehend.

  The abrupt transition smmed me back into the cold, harsh reality of the chapel. I stumbled, disoriented, the raw, untamed energy still thrumming violently through my veins. The shimmering, invisible walls of their makeshift containment cell materialized around me, trapping me once more in their silent, watchful embrace.

  Rage, sharp, immediate, and all-consuming, flooded through me, eclipsing the shock and pain of my mother’s revetion. He had followed me. He had interfered in a moment of devastating truth. He had dragged me back to this gilded cage.

  “What the hell did you just do?” I snarled at Sis, who stood just outside the shimmering barrier, his tall frame a study in controlled stillness, his expression as enigmatic as ever.

  “I prevented a dangerous release of energy,” he said calmly, his voice a low, steady counterpoint to my rising fury.

  “Release of energy?” I exploded, pacing the confines of my prison like a caged animal. “That was my life! My family! My truth, however ugly! You had no right to rip me away from that!”

  “Your uncontrolled power is a threat to yourself and others, Luna,” Thorne said gently, stepping closer to the shimmering barrier, his green-streaked hair catching the dim light.

  “And this isn’t a threat?” I gestured wildly at the invisible walls that held me captive. “Being locked up like some dangerous animal? Denied the chance to understand my own existence?”

  “We are trying to help you understand,” Asher added quietly, his calm presence a stark contrast to my votile state.

  “Help me?” I rounded on them, my anger raw and untamed. “By stalking me? By dragging me back to this… this glorified prison? You think this is helping?”

  My gaze locked onto Sis, the intensity of my fury focused squarely on him. “You followed me into my own home? You invaded the only space that ever felt remotely like mine?”

  He didn’t deny it, his violet eyes holding mine with an unnerving intensity. “We needed to ensure everyone’s safety. Your emotional state was… votile.”

  “Votile?” The ugh that escaped me was hollow, bitter, and devoid of any humor. “My emotional state was just detonated by a bomb you conveniently defused before I could see the shrapnel! My safety was just obliterated in my own apartment, thanks to a secret you ripped me away from! A secret I deserve answers to, more than anything!”

  The others began to stir, drawn by the escating noise of our argument. Kairo, his usual levity completely absent, joined the small, concerned group outside my cell.

  “What in God’s name is going on?” he asked, his voice tight with worry.

  “He kidnapped me again!” I yelled, my voice hoarse and trembling with exhaustion and rage. “He followed me home! He dragged me away from my own family, from a truth I desperately needed to hear!”

  “Luna, you were about to…” Sis began, his voice low and measured, but I cut him off, my control finally snapping.

  “About to what? Finally understand why my own mother has hated me my entire life? Finally understand why I’ve always felt like an outsider? Finally get some damn answers?” The raw emotion was draining me, leaving me trembling, my vision blurring at the edges.

  “We understand this is difficult for you,” Asher said softly, his eyes filled with a concern that felt almost genuine.

  “Do you?” My voice was barely a whisper now, the fight draining out of me, repced by a bone-deep weariness. The devastating weight of my mother’s revetion, coupled with the terrifying surge of my own uncontrolble power, was too much for my already fractured psyche to bear. My legs felt weak and unsteady, and the cold stone floor seemed to rush up to meet me. The st thing I registered was the blurry, concerned faces of the Fallen Ones looming over me before a merciful darkness cimed me.

  When I finally drifted back to consciousness, the familiar chill of stone was gone, repced by the unexpected softness of a mattress beneath me and the gentle warmth of bnkets. Dim, unfamiliar light filtered through what looked like a regur window, casting soft shadows across the small room. A strange sense of… not comfort, exactly, but a ck of immediate threat, washed over me. Then I noticed them. Stacked neatly against one wall, as if deliberately pced there, were my worn duffel bag, my battered sketchbooks, and the small wooden box that held the few precious trinkets of my past. Everything I had risked returning home for.

  Disbelief warred with a dawning, unsettling suspicion. How? There was no logical expnation for my belongings being here, safe and sound. My gaze drifted slowly towards the closed wooden door. Sis. He had to be the one responsible. A shiver, ran down my spine.

  Pushing myself up slowly, every muscle in my body aching with exhaustion and the lingering weight of emotional trauma, I made my way out of the small room. The main area of the chapel was quiet, the vast space feeling strangely empty without their usual chaotic energy. I found Sis near the makeshift training area, his back to me, his posture suggesting a weary vigince.

  “How?” My voice was quiet, still thick with the residue of sleep and exhaustion.

  He turned, his expression as guarded and unreadable as ever. “Your belongings were… retrieved.”

  “By you?” The question hung in the air between us, unspoken accusations and unanswered questions.

  Before Sis could respond, Asher appeared from one of the side passages, his usual calm demeanor tinged with a quiet concern. He looked from Sis to me, his brow slightly furrowed.

  “Luna,” Asher said softly, his voice a gentle counterpoint to the raw emotion still vibrating within me. “Are you alright?”

  “Alright?” The word was a bitter irony. “No, Asher, I am far from alright. My entire life has just been revealed as a lie. The woman I thought was my mother… isn’t. My own father… had an affair. I need answers, Asher. I need to understand who I am, where I come from.”

  My gaze locked onto his, my voice pleading, desperate. “You all talk about understanding, about helping me. If that’s true, then you have to let me go back. Just for a little while. I need to speak to my parents. I need to know the truth. It’s tearing me apart. How can I possibly focus on controlling… this… when my entire foundation has just crumbled?”

  Tears welled in my eyes, the exhaustion and emotional trauma overwhelming me. “Please, Asher. You seem… reasonable. You seem to understand the importance of family, of belonging. Can’t you see that I need this? These answers are vital to me. Vital to me even beginning to come to terms with… everything.”

  Asher’s gaze softened, a flicker of empathy in his usually serene eyes. He looked towards Sis, a silent question passing between them. The silence in the chapel stretched, heavy with the weight of my plea and the unspoken conflict within the group.

  TO BE CONTINUED...