The North Mountains, Albania.

The mountain is breathing.

Fog rises and falls along its jagged spine, slow and heavy, like the lungs of something ancient. Wind howls through the northern peaks like the wail of a thousand tortured souls, tearing at the bruised twilight sky that presses down on the wild mountains like a suffocating shroud.

That is the first wrong thing Cassius notices.

Each rise of fog looks like a lung filling. Each fall, a slow, dying exhale. Snow drifts sideways, not down, as if the sky itself has lost direction. Pines loom like broken spears, their black tips vanishing into clouds.

Cassius moves uphill.

He doesn’t remember how he came here but as he moves his boots make no sound. The world is muffled, wrapped in thick, dead cotton. Even the wind feels strangled.

Then he smells it.

Metal.

Not fresh. Not sharp.

Old.

Blood that has already been forgiven by the cold.

“Cass…”

The voice is wrong. Too thin. Too far.

He turns.

The trees have changed.

They bend inward now, warped by ice and time, their dark spines curving to form a narrow corridor. The fog parts like a curtain drawn by invisible hands.

And there she is.

Elena.

Kneeling in the snow.

Her hair is dark with frost. Her college jacket hangs open, stiff and wrong on her shoulders. There is red at her throat, blooming through the white like a second, terrible flower.

“Lena,” he whispers.

His voice breaks the world.

The mountain exhales.

She lifts her head.

Her eyes are open—but they don’t see him. They stare past his face, past the trees, past the sky, as if something behind him matters far more.

Cassius runs.

The distance does not change.

Snow thickens around his legs, swallowing him to the knees, the waist, the ribs. Each step grows heavier, like the mountain is learning his weight, adjusting to keep him.

“Elena!” he shouts.

This time, she smiles.

It is not relief.

It is apology.

She reaches out to him. Her hand trembles in the frozen air. Cassius tries to move—but his arms are numb, locked, as if invisible ropes bind them. The harder he fights, the colder they become.

Suddenly, the wound in her throat opens.

Blood spills in a slow, dark ribbon, steaming where it meets the cold. It runs down her chest and into the snow, carving a thin red path that winds downhill—toward him.

He falls.

His knees strike the ground.

The snow is not snow.

It is blood.

Crimson. Warm. Smothering.

“No,” he breathes.

The fog surges back.

When it clears, she is no longer kneeling.

She is laid out on the ground.

Still.

Open-eyed.

Her skin is the wrong color for life.

Her body is half-buried in frost and stone, as if the mountain has already begun to claim her. One bare hand rests outside the emergency sheet, fingers curled, nails broken.

Cassius crawls to her.

Each movement feels like tearing through glass.

Her skin is marble.

Too smooth. Too hard. Too final.

His fingers close around the edge of the silver sheet before he can stop himself.

He presses his ear to her chest.

There is no heartbeat.

Only the mountain.

Only the wind threading through the trees like distant breathing.

Only the soft whisper of snow settling over a body the world has decided to forget.

“No… no… no…”

Her lips move.

Just once.

Soundless.

But he understands.

You were supposed to find me sooner.

Behind him, something shifts.

Elena’s open eyes begin to fill.

Not with tears.

With black.

Ink-dark. Lightless.

They flood outward until the white is gone.

Until all that remains is reflection.

And in them, he sees the mountain.

The fog.

Himself.

And behind him—

Two green points of light.

Watching.

Cassius jerks awake with a strangled breath, his hand clawed over his heart, ribs aching as if something inside him is still frozen.

The nightmare always ends the same way: with the terrible realization that finding her body wasn’t the beginning of the mystery.

It was the end of something far worse.

Because somewhere in those wild, merciless mountains, whatever brought Elena to that desolate peak was still waiting—patient as ancient stone, cold as mountain wind, and inevitable as death itself.

“You confuse silence with innocence. I never make that mistake. If the law were fair, I wouldn’t have a job.”

- Aelara Vivienne Rudwick

Being a Criminal Defence Lawyer sucks.

And being a psychology major who can see the gears turning in someone else’s head? That sucks even more.

Just like right now—sitting in Central Prison, Albania, across a metal table from Walter Rossi.

The most wanted criminal.

The newspapers call him the Butcher.

The police files call him Subject W.R.

Who killed more than twenty girls.

Some were forgotten by the public.

Some were still alive in bedrooms that hadn’t been cleaned out yet. Some were too young for the lives they never reached.

They weren’t just killed. They were used. Broken down. Cut apart slowly enough for him to learn what panic really sounds like—then what was left of them was thrown into the sea, trusting sharks to erase the proof.

If fishermen hadn’t noticed what the waves kept returning, he’d still be free. And God knows how many more girls would already be gone.

He’s been in this prison for seven years.

Seven years of silence. Seven years of refusing every lawyer, every profiler, every cop.

And today, for the first time, he agreed to talk.

To me.

The interrogation room is too white. Like it’s trying to scrub memory itself. The light flickers.

The air smells of disinfectant and cold metal and something underneath it that never really leaves.

Walter is smiling.

Wrists cuffed. Ankles chained. Calm like a man waiting to be entertained. His prison uniform hangs loose on a body far too relaxed for someone who will never again see an unbarred window.

“So,” he says, dragging the word out, tilting his head as he studies me like a curiosity. “You don’t look like the others.”

I place my file on the table.

I don’t open it.

“And you don’t look like a man who’s about to spend the rest of his life in a concrete box,” I say lightly. “Yet here we are. Life’s full of disappointments.”

Walter’s smile deepens, but something sharp moves behind it. “Most of the people who sit there try to look bigger Louder. Meaner.”

“And I’m what?” I ask.

He tilts his head again. “You look like you’re already somewhere else.”

He’s trying to unbalance me. Shift the air. Make this about me instead of the twenty girls whose names are stitched into my memory.

I won’t give him that.

“I’m right here,” I say. “And you’re exactly where you belong.”

He leans forward. Chains whisper against the floor. “Do you know what they all had in common?”

“They met you,” I answer. “That was enough.”

A breath of surprise slips through his smile.

“You think this is about me?” he asks. “I was just the last place they ended.”

I keep my voice steady. “You hurt people because emptiness terrifies you. Because silence reminds you there’s nothing inside you worth listening to. You needed a reaction.”

His fingers curl against the cuffs.

Good.

“What do you want to know?” he asks. “How they begged? How long it took? Or which one screamed the longest?”

“I want the truth,” I say. “And the truth is, you’re not extraordinary. You’re predictable.”

“That’s not what the girls thought.”

I lean forward.

“That’s because you hunted the vulnerable,” I say quietly. “Not the brave. Not the protected. You didn’t choose strength. You chose access.”

His smile fades a fraction.

“You didn’t choose them because you hated them,” I continue. “You chose them because they were available. Because they fit. Because no one was guarding them the way no one guarded you.”

“There it is,” he murmurs. “You think this is about my childhood.”

“I think,” I reply, “that if you were truly powerful, you wouldn’t need witnesses.”

He leans back slightly. “And what about you, Aelara? What kind of person sits across from me without opening the file?”

“The kind who doesn’t need your version,” I say calmly.

“Then why are you here?” he asks softly. “You don’t look curious. You look familiar.”

My jaw tightens.

“You think you know me?”

“I do.” His smile returns—but thinner. Sharper. Like a crack in glass. “Tell me… did they die screaming, or silent?”

Fire flashes behind my eyes. Smoke.

Heat. Screaming that never finished.

“You sit like someone who’s already lost someone,” he continues quietly.

“Not to death. To fire. Or water. Or smoke.”

“You don’t get to talk about my fear,” I say.

“Oh, but fear is the only thing in this room that doesn’t belong to me,” he replies. “And it’s loud on you.”

My fingers curl under the table.

“What are you afraid of, Aelara?” he whispers. “That you won’t save them? That you’re already too late? That one day you’ll be standing somewhere you can’t fix?”

My chair scrapes as I stand.

The sound is harsh. Necessary.

I step closer to the table and place my palms on it.

“What happens,” he asks, “when you run out of control?”

I lean closer—close enough that he has to tilt his head back.

“Then I stop talking to monsters,” I reply. “And start burying them.”

I gather my file and turn toward the door.

The door buzzes open.

Behind me, for the first time since I sat down, Walter Rossi doesn’t laugh.

And that?

That’s how I know I won.

Without looking back, I move through the corridors, my heels echoing against concrete.

Doors. Bars. Shadows. I ignore the uneasy eyes watching from behind steel, the low murmurs, the hands wrapped around cell bars like they’re trying to feel something human.

I don’t slow down. I don’t let myself.

The gate finally groans open.

Cold air hits my face—and that’s when I realize I wasn’t breathing.

I try to take a deep breath, but it gets stuck. My throat tightens. My chest feels heavy.

No. Not now.

My vision blurs at the edges, dark bleeding into white. My heartbeat is suddenly everywhere—ears, ribs, skull.

Too fast. Too loud.

I know this feeling.

A panic attack.

I try to do what my therapist taught me.

Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.

I start counting in my head.

One. Two. Three. Four.

It doesn’t help.

The air won’t go in properly. My fingers go numb. I walk faster toward the parking lot, toward my car, just trying to get away.

My head feels light.

The world tilts.

And then—

I crash into something solid.

A body.

Strong. Warm. Unmoving.

I lose my balance and start to fall.

Strong arms catch me, wrapping around my waist.

Holding me up.

For a second, all I feel is how solid he is. The warmth. A heartbeat that isn’t mine.

Then everything goes dark.

The last thing I feel is his grip tightening around me.

And then I black out