I stood in the corridor, the air thick and heavy with the metallic scent of blood. Three more girls burst out of the room behind the body, laughing brightly as they ran down the hall together.

One had sleek white hair that streamed behind her like moonlight. Two had black hair that bounced with every step. They passed straight through Riya’s corpse on the floor without slowing, their bare feet and the hems of their old-fashioned dresses moving through the pooling blood as if it weren’t there. Then they passed through me — a cold ripple of air and memory — their laughter echoing off the walls like bells from another time.

Eleanor. Sophia. Monica.

[These are her memories. The moments that shaped her life.]

Their laughter filled the house, bright and carefree. I came down from the landing and stood on the stairs to watch. In an instant the girls were around ten years old, sitting cross-legged in a circle on the wooden floor below, sunlight from a nearby window painting their faces in warm gold. A boy stood in the doorway watching them, silent and strange, before he dissolved into nothing like smoke.

"Why must your brother always be so strange, Eleanor?" Sophia asked, tilting her head with a playful grin.

"I cannot say," Eleanor answered, and all four of them broke into giggles, shoulders shaking, hands covering their mouths.

"I believe I love him," Sophia said suddenly, her grin widening.

"What do you mean?" Riya asked, eyes wide with curiosity. "Like, love love?"

"Mhm." Sophia’s smile turned dreamy.

The girls burst into fresh laughter, the sound bright and innocent, filling the entire house.

"It is forbidden," Monica said, trying to sound serious but failing as another giggle escaped.

"The world is changing, sisters," Sophia replied, lifting her chin with dramatic flair. As she spoke, the memory shifted again. The girls were now teenagers, limbs longer, faces sharper, their dresses more fitted, laughter carrying a new, knowing edge.

The scene dissolved like mist. I watched it all, unable to look away. So life is just a collection of memories.

Now Sophia stood with Riya, both in their early twenties, sunlight streaming through tall windows onto their skin. They were in a sunlit room, tension thick in the air.

"I think I’m pregnant, Maria," Sophia said quietly.

"What?" Riya’s voice cracked, her face draining of color. "Are you certain?"

"I am."

"By whom?"

"Ethan." Sophia paused, eyes downcast. "Maria, I’m so sorry."

Riya’s face changed in an instant — jaw tightening, eyes flashing with pain and betrayal. The memory faded.

"Don’t ever come near me again." A new memory took shape. Riya was shoving Ethan hard in the chest. He didn’t move an inch, standing like stone.

"Maria," Ethan said, voice heavy.

"That is no longer my name." Tears welled in her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. "You chose her, Ethan. We are finished."

He turned and walked away. The memory dissolved into the next.

The four of them appeared again, naked, years later, seated on the ground in a circle, hands joined. I knew this one. Eleanor had shown me the same moment in her bathtub, only there it had stood in a forest. Here there were no trees — only the four women, bare skin glowing in soft moonlight, faces solemn as Sophia spoke the words that would end the world.

That memory faded too, leaving the house quiet once more. I came down the stairs slowly, each step creaking under my weight.

Riya had been Maria. The woman my father had once loved. Before Sophia took him.

A whole life of grief, replaying in the seconds after her death, and I had walked into the middle of it.

"We can’t do this without Eleanor. We need them," Riya said.

She stood in a sunlit room with Monica and Sophia, the windows casting long golden beams across the wooden floor. Behind her, a man leaned against the wall — the same face from the portraits downstairs, sharp features and watchful eyes.

"Yes, we can," Sophia replied, her voice cool and final. "The house of Nadez turned against us. We move on without them."

"We need to rethink this." Riya stepped closer to Sophia, her hands clenched at her sides, the fabric of her dress shifting with the movement.

"The house of Nadez declared war on the goal," Sophia said, lifting her chin. "They’re not part of us anymore."

Riya leaned in and whispered something into Sophia’s ear, low enough that the others couldn’t catch it. "But you have a Nadez in your house."

Sophia’s expression didn’t change, but her fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the table. She turned to the others, voice steady. "And the Veyrons?"

"We move," Monica said simply, arms folded across her chest.

"Edgar." Sophia turned to the man from the photographs. "What do the Belmontes say?"

Edgar Belmonte straightened, his gaze moving across the three women. "We move. We’ve lived a long time, but we’re not immortal. We have to move fast."

Riya was hurting. It showed in the tight line of her jaw, the way her shoulders tensed, the subtle tremble in her hands as she clasped them together. The memory dissolved like smoke.

Now Riya held a baby in her arms, rocking it gently, her face soft with exhaustion and love. A rapid flicker of moments followed — the child growing, laughing, reaching for her — carrying the memory forward through years in seconds.

Then the scene settled. Riya sat alone on the sofa in this very room, the one I was standing beside now. She pulled a sheet of the same old paper from a drawer, smoothing it on her lap. There was no pen in her hand, yet she began to write, her fingers moving as if guided by invisible ink.

I leaned in closer, trying to catch every word as they appeared on the page.

The awakening is not a single day. It has already—

Something moved in the house, a faint creak upstairs. Riya stopped writing, head lifting sharply.

"It’s time," she said to herself, voice steady but tired. "What’s taking you so long, Nadez?"

She rose from the sofa, slid the unfinished note back into the drawer, and rushed up the stairs, bare feet silent on the wood.

I didn’t follow. That was likely the last of her. I crossed to the drawer and pulled the paper out.

The awakening is not a single day. It has already—

The words were exactly as she had written them. Then the ink began to move on its own, shifting and reforming into something new, letters bleeding and reshaping before my eyes.