Somewhere Quiet. Somewhere Forgotten.
The ink bleeds through the page, dark and deliberate, like veins pulled tight beneath skin. A single candle flickers beside her, throwing shadows across the cabin's walls dancing silhouettes that whisper names she doesn't dare say aloud.
Senna Calix doesn't flinch at the cold anymore. Or the silence. They are her oldest, most faithful companions.
The world believes she's dead, an overdose, a fall, maybe a quiet vanishing no one bothered to investigate. Let them believe it. Obscurity is safer than infamy.
Safer than the truth.
She dips the pen again, slow and steady. The words pour from her like confession, like compulsion. Each letter is a blade. Each sentence a wound. When she writes the scream, the way his jaw slackened, the way the blood rushed like a river from his temple she doesn't blink.
She's always known how this story ends.
She seals the manuscript with trembling hands. No title. No sender. Just one recipient.
Dr. Marianne Hale.
The name still tastes like rust on her tongue.
She steps into the night, shadows folding around her, the cold slicing through layers of memory and regret. She leaves no footprints. No trace. Just a package that will arrive two days later, on a doorstep far away.
Marianne opens it, her fingers trembling at the first line, she won't realize:
The story has already begun.