Episode 4: The Wait is Over

Mia frowned, her fingers tightening slightly around the pen in her hand.

“What do you mean by *lifetime*?” she asked.

Damian did not answer immediately.

He only watched her for a moment, his gaze unnervingly calm, as though he had expected that question from the very beginning. Then he leaned back against the wall, his expression unreadable, and spoke with a strange kind of casualness that made Mia’s skin crawl.

“Lifetime means exactly what it sounds like,” he said softly. “A life. A birth. A death. And then another one.”

Mia’s brows drew together.

Damian’s lips curved faintly, but there was nothing warm about the expression. It was not quite a smile—more like the shadow of one.

“How many lives do you think you’ve lived, Mia?” he asked. “Have you ever wondered who you were before this one? Or how many times you’ve died? How many times you’ve been born again?”

A chill slid down her spine.

Mia had spent years studying the human mind—its fractures, its delusions, its defense mechanisms, the strange ways trauma could twist reality into something almost unrecognizable. She had read case studies of murderers who believed in divine voices, men who claimed to speak to the dead, women who remembered entire lives that never existed. She knew how to remain calm in front of disturbed minds.

But this felt different.

It wasn’t only what Damian was saying.

It was the way he said it.

Too calm. Too certain. As if reincarnation, death, and memory were not fantasies or delusions, but facts he had already lived through.

For the first time since entering the prison, Mia felt something sharp and unfamiliar move through her chest.

Fear.

She shook her head once. “No,” she said quickly. “I don’t know anything about that.”

Damian held her gaze, and for a moment she had the unsettling impression that he knew she was lying—even though she wasn’t sure what she was lying about.

Before he could say anything else, Mia forced herself to move on.

“Are you done killing people?” she asked, her voice firmer than she felt. “Or do you still intend to kill someone if you get the chance?”

The question changed the air in the room.

Damian went still.

Not the quiet stillness he had worn since the start of the interview, but something heavier. Darker. His face lost the last trace of amusement, and the silence that followed seemed to press against the walls of the cell.

Mia waited.

At last, he said, “No.”

She frowned. “No?”

“No,” Damian repeated. “I’m not done.”

A cold knot formed in Mia’s stomach.

“There’s still one person left.”

For a second, she forgot how to breathe.

The words landed with terrifying simplicity, and her mind immediately jumped to the reports, the escape records, the names of the dead. Her grip on the pen tightened.

“You mean you’re planning to escape again?” she asked. “You’ll break out of prison and come back the way you always do?”

Damian looked at her, and something in his eyes softened—not with kindness, but with a strange, almost painful certainty.

“No,” he said quietly. “The wait is over.”

Mia stared at him.

“I found the one I was looking for.”

The words made her heart stumble.

Before she could ask what he meant, the iron door behind her opened with a harsh metallic sound. The jailer stepped inside, his expression brisk and businesslike.

“Time’s up, Miss Luther.”

Mia turned sharply. “Please—just a few more minutes. I still have questions left.”

“I’m sorry,” the jailer said, though there was no real apology in his tone. “You need to leave now. He’s being transferred to the high-security ward.”

Mia rose from the chair too quickly, the legs scraping against the floor.

“Just five minutes,” she insisted. “Please. I’m almost done.”

The jailer shook his head. “No, ma’am. That won’t be possible.”

Mia clenched her jaw.

Under ordinary circumstances, she would have told him that Damian had said something alarming—something suspicious enough to demand immediate attention. But university protocol was clear: information gathered during an official interview was confidential until it was reviewed and submitted through the department. If she reported every disturbing answer directly to the prison staff, she could jeopardize both the assignment and her standing with the university.

And yet nothing about this felt ordinary.

She gathered her notebook with stiff fingers, trying to ignore the unease coiling tighter inside her.

As she stepped past him, Damian finally spoke again.

“We’ll meet very soon.”

His voice was barely more than a whisper.

Soft enough that only she heard it.

Mia froze.

The jailer was already turning toward the door, clearly unaware of what had been said, but Mia stood rooted in place, her breath caught somewhere in her throat.

What does he mean, we’ll meet soon?

Slowly, she turned back.

Damian was still sitting on the edge of the narrow bed, exactly where she had left him. But the expression in his eyes had changed.

For the first time, there was no mockery in them. No amusement. No dark, obsessive smile threatening at the corner of his mouth.

Only softness.

A terrible, impossible softness that unsettled her far more than his laughter ever had.

He looked at her the way a starving man might look at rain after years of drought. As if he had spent centuries searching through darkness for something he thought he had lost forever—and had finally found it.

Mia couldn’t understand it.

Couldn’t understand him.

Couldn’t understand why that look made her chest ache in a way she had no name for.

The jailer stepped between them. “Miss Luther.”

The spell broke.

Mia tore her gaze away and walked out of the cell.

At the front register, she signed the visitor log with hands that were steadier than she felt. Around her, the prison had become busier. Several officers and armed guards were already moving toward Cell 214, their boots striking heavily against the concrete floor. She glanced up in time to see them escorting Damian out, surrounding him as though he were something far more dangerous than a man.

He walked between them in silence.

And even then—even with guards at his sides, even while being taken deeper into the prison—his eyes found hers.

Mia looked away first.

She signed her name, handed the pen back, and left without another word.

But as she stepped out of the prison gates and into the pale afternoon light, Damian’s whisper kept circling through her mind like a curse she could not shake.

We’ll meet very soon.

The words repeated themselves over and over until they drowned out everything else.

By the time Mia reached college, she still hadn’t managed to push them away.

The campus was loud in the ordinary way only colleges could be—students crossing the courtyard, voices rising from the canteen, the sharp ringing of a bicycle bell near the front gate. It should have grounded her. It should have reminded her that the prison, Damian, the strange interview—all of it belonged to a different world.

But it didn’t.

She had barely stepped into the department corridor when one of her classmates spotted her.

“There you are,” the girl said, walking up to her with a frown. “Why did you ditch at the last moment? We were supposed to go together.”

Mia adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder and forced a small shrug, hoping her face gave nothing away.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just felt like it would be better if I handled it alone.”

Her classmate crossed her arms. “That’s not fair. You could’ve at least told me earlier.”

Mia gave a tired smile. “You said you had work today too, remember? And since you weren’t sure you could make it, I just took the schedule for today and went.”

The explanation seemed good enough, or at least good enough for the moment, because her classmate let it go with a dramatic sigh.

“Fine,” she said. “But next time, don’t disappear like that.”

Mia nodded, murmured something light in return, and let the conversation drift into ordinary college chatter—assignment deadlines, a professor’s bad mood, someone forgetting their project file at home. She answered when she had to, smiled when expected, and even managed to submit the first draft of her interview notes to the department office.

On the outside, she looked normal.

On the inside, she was still standing in Cell 214.

Still hearing Damian’s voice.

Still seeing the strange softness in his eyes.

By the time evening fell and she finally returned home, the interview had not loosened its hold on her in the slightest. It followed her through the front gate, up the stairs, into her room. She placed her bag on the chair, dropped her notebook onto the desk, and sat on the edge of her bed without even changing out of her clothes.

The room was quiet.

Too quiet.

Mia stared at nothing, replaying every answer Damian had given her.

How many lives do you think you’ve lived, Mia?

There’s still one person left.

The wait is over. I found the one I was looking for.

And then, the final whisper—

We’ll meet very soon.

Her throat tightened.

She told herself he was manipulating her. That this was exactly what dangerous men did: they studied fear, found its shape, and wore it like a weapon. He had probably noticed her discomfort, her hesitation, the moments when she had lost control of the interview. Maybe he had simply chosen his words carefully, knowing they would stay with her.

That was the logical explanation.

So why did it feel wrong?

Why did it feel as though Damian hadn’t been threatening her at all?

Why had he looked at her as if finding her had ended something… and begun something far worse?

Mia pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes and drew in a slow breath.

She needed rest.

She needed distance from this entire day.

And most of all, she needed to stop thinking about Damian Darcurs before she started seeing meaning where there was none.

But even as she lay back against the bed and closed her eyes, one thought refused to leave her.

Not the murders.

Not the prison.

Not even the strange talk of lifetimes and rebirth.