Chapter 6-Serena
We descended the rune-carved stairwell.
Me, Ursula, Sapphire, and Emery.
The stone thrummed faintly beneath our feet—layered wards, defensive magic, centuries of accumulated spellwork humming like distant bees in a hive.
The Asgarheim Runevald Institute wasn’t just a school.
It was a stronghold of higher magical learning.
Graduate-level arcana.
Advanced rune binding.
Blood pact jurisprudence.
Magical ethics.
Inter-realm diplomacy.
This wasn’t broomsticks and beginner spellcasting.
No Hogwarts here.
This was real power.
“Are you nervous?” Sapphire asked.
Right.
Empath.
“Yes,” I admitted. “This is the first time I’ve ever, um, acknowledged any of this.”
“What are your talents?” Emery asked.
There it was.
The question.
I didn’t have a clean answer.
So, I shrugged.
“Not sure.”
I tugged at my coat, aware of my thighs rubbing as we descended. The sixth-floor dorm placement felt like an ironic cosmic joke.
Sapphire winked. “You’ll get used to the stairs.”
“Yeah, not with these thighs,” I mostly joked.
Honestly, I had short legs and thick thighs. So, me and stairs?
Yeah, we had a hate-hate relationship.
The girls were already gossiping like besties when two male students joined us.
One moss-skinned, yellow-eyed, sharp smile.
The other gray, angular, carved from stone like a cathedral gargoyle.
Dietrich and Olaf.
Apparently, Monsters here were aggressively attractive and had oddly stuffy names.
I was not prepared for either detail.
“You’re Serena? So, what are you, then?” Dietrich asked.
“What?” I asked, taken aback by his inquisitive nature.
“She doesn’t know,” Ursula cut in sharply.
He shrugged.
“Wasn’t being rude.”
He absolutely was.
“No worries, love, we can figure it out over a pint,” the green one said and winked.
We headed toward the village below the Institute—lanterns flickering gold against wet cobblestones.
Asgarheim felt medieval and modern at once.
Mud brick beside rune-lit steel.
Ancient beams carved with glowing sigils.
The sea crashing violently below black cliffs.
The storm hadn’t left.
It had simply settled.
Like it was waiting.
“So, new girl doesn’t trust us with her secrets?” Dietrich teased.
“Um, she’s not the only new girl,” Sapphire snapped.
“No offense, Dietrich, but I don’t know you,” I replied evenly.
And I didn’t.
Trust had cost me too much growing up.
Buckie’s Tavern stood crooked and warm beneath carved eaves.
Inside was laughter, ale foam, wood smoke, roasted herbs.
Comforting.
But the ghosts were thick here.
Seven powerful manifestations.
Dozens fading.
I catalogued them automatically.
Clear ones were newly dead or emotionally anchored.
Blurry ones were drifting.
I’d created that system at eight years old to stay sane.
But that wasn’t the only strange occurrence at Buckie’s.
See, I felt it again then.
That awareness.
Like something enormous had just turned its attention toward me.
Not a ghost.
Not a spectre.
Something alive.
And hungry.
It was there.
Watching.
My skin prickled.
“Water for me,” I said quickly.
I had a thing about drugs and alcohol. See, after being forced to take so many different medications when I was younger I preferred to remain in full control of my faculties at all times.
So booze? Recreational drugs? Hard pass on both.
“Aye, water for me too,” Sapphire added.
Ursula chatted excitedly about her family history with Runevald.
Founded in 1666.
Multiples of three sacred.
Runes aligned to cosmic cycles.
I tried to follow.
Tried to look normal.
“It’s no biggie. Most of the Earth females who come here are Witches,” Dietrich said and shrugged.
“I’m not a Witch,” I said quietly.
Three heads turned.
“At least, I don’t think I am.”
Sapphire frowned slightly. “Hmm. Sometimes I can get a read on people, but your magic feels muted.”
“Muted?”
“As though something is blocking it,” she confirmed.
And that sent a cold ripple through me.
Blocking?
What was blocked?
What was trying to surface?
“Um, so, Werewolves are real?” I asked weakly, trying to change the subject.
Sapphire smiled faintly.
“Yes! Among other things. Like our friends here,” Ursula said and smirked.
Dietrich returned with drinks and resumed his interrogation.
“Are you hiding something, little American?”
The walls seemed to lean inward.
Spectres gathered along the rafters.
They always came when my emotions spiked.
Always.
I knocked into the table.
Water sloshed.
Embarrassment flared.
“Watch it,” a purple-haired Monster muttered.
Heat burned up my neck.
“You can tell us, you know,” Dietrich added.
“Stop pushing,” I snapped. “I promise I’m not trying to be mysterious.”
“Then tell us what you are.”
I licked my lips.
The ghosts pressed closer.
Shadows thickened.
The air grew tight.
And beneath it—that other presence intensified.
High above.
Watching.
The storm cracked violently overhead, thunder shaking the tavern beams.
Every head turned briefly toward the windows.
It felt like an omen.
Like something had shifted.
Fine. You want honesty?
I grabbed Dietrich’s ale and took a swallow.
Liquid courage.
Or just liquid stupidity.
“You’re all Supernaturals,” I said. “So my thing is probably nothing special here, right?”
My roommates and the two Monsters with us all looked at each other, then back at me. They neither confirmed nor denied my assumption.
My heart pounded.
Ghosts sharpened in the corners of my vision.
They were listening too.
“I don’t like to talk about it because, well, I don’t know how to turn it off,” I admitted. “And it kinda scares me.”
Silence fell.
I gathered every ounce of nerve I had.
“Serena—” Sapphire started, but I cut her off.
It was now or never.
“The thing is… I see dead people.”
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
Too loud.
Too real.
They didn’t just hang in the air—they landed.
And everything… shifted.
I felt it immediately.
Not in what they said—because no one said anything right away—but in the way the space around me tightened. Like the room had drawn in a breath and forgotten how to let it go.
My stomach dropped.
Oh God. You said it. You actually said it.
I’d done this before.
Too many times.
Different rooms. Different faces. Same result.
That moment where everything goes quiet—not because people understand you… but because they’ve decided something about you.
Something bad.
Something wrong.
My chest tightened, heart slamming hard enough I was sure it had to be audible. I resisted the urge to laugh it off, to backtrack, to say just kidding or I mean metaphorically or literally anything that would make this feel less like I’d just handed over proof that I didn’t belong.
I forced myself not to look away.
But I couldn’t stop the spiral.
They think you’re crazy.
Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they?
You just did it again.
Faces sharpened across the table—too focused, too intent—and my brain filled in the blanks the way it always had.
Judgment.
Discomfort.
That subtle shift people get when they’re trying to decide how far gone you are.
My fingers curled slightly against the table.
Say something. Fix it.
But before I could—
“Necromancer,” Dietrich whispered.
I blinked.
That… was not what I expected.
I turned toward him slowly, like I’d misheard.
“What?”
But he wasn’t looking at me like I was unstable.
He looked… stunned.
Like I’d said something important.
The word echoed in my head.
Necromancer.
It didn’t feel like an accusation.
It felt like… a name.
Something settled in my chest—heavy, grounding, undeniable.
Not crazy.
Not broken.
Something else.
I swallowed.
Around me, the silence shifted again—but differently this time. Still intense. Still focused. But not in the way I was used to.
Sapphire was staring at me, her expression unreadable—but there was something in her eyes I couldn’t quite place. Not fear. Not exactly.
Something sharper.
Emery leaned forward, elbows on the table, like I’d just said something she’d been waiting to hear.
Ursula’s hand brushed mine under the table—light, reassuring.
I clung to that.
Because I still didn’t trust it.
Didn’t trust any of it.
Years of being told I was wrong didn’t just disappear because a few people didn’t immediately call a doctor.
My heart was still racing.
My body was still braced for the fallout.
For the correction.
For someone to tell me—
“No, Serena. That’s not what this is.”
But no one did.
Instead—
The storm outside shifted.
I felt it before I really heard it.
A low roll of thunder—not distant, not random—but close.
Too close.
Too deliberate.
It crawled along my spine, settling somewhere deep in my chest, right where the words had landed seconds before.
I stiffened.
That… felt weird.
Like it wasn’t just weather.
Like it was—
Answering.
My breath caught.
Don’t be dramatic.
Except I couldn’t shake it.
The timing.
The way the air suddenly felt thicker, heavier—like something had leaned in.
Watching.
Waiting.
My gaze flicked toward the tavern windows, but all I could see was darkness and rain, streaking hard against the glass.
Still—
Something felt off.
Not like the ghosts I used to see.
Not the quiet, lingering presence of something unfinished.
This was different.
Bigger.
Heavier.
And—
My stomach twisted.
Hungry.
The thought slipped in uninvited, and I immediately wanted to take it back.
That’s not what this is.
Except my instincts—whatever those even were anymore—didn’t agree.
I pulled my hand back from Ursula’s, wrapping my fingers around my drink instead, grounding myself in something solid, something normal.
“You guys are really just gonna… go with that?” I asked, trying for casual and landing somewhere closer to strained.
Necromancer.
The word still echoed.
Still fit.
Too well.
And the storm—
Another crack of thunder split the sky, louder this time.
Closer.
My pulse jumped.
It’s just weather.
It had to be.
It had to be.
Because the alternative—
The idea that something out there had heard me—
Had recognized me—
Was a whole different level of not okay.
I forced a breath, trying to steady myself, trying to stay present.
Trying not to spiral.
Because no one here was laughing.
No one was calling me crazy.
No one was looking at me like I needed to be fixed.
And that should have been enough.
It should have felt like relief.
But instead—it felt like the moment right before something changes.
And I had the distinct, unsettling feeling…
That whatever had just noticed me?
It wasn’t done with me yet.