Chapter 18-Serena
The first month at the Asgarheim Runevald Institute felt less like orientation and more like controlled chaos.
Graduate school for supernaturals was hardcore.
We weren’t eighteen-year-old freshmen figuring out dorm life and cafeteria schedules.
Some of us—like me—were pushing thirty, fully formed, supposedly grown.
Others? They were ancient. Powerful. Monstrous in the most literal sense.
Creatures who had walked battlefields and other realms long before my ancestors ever set foot in New Jersey and they were still here to learn more.
It was fantastic.
Terrifying.
Mind-bending.
Learning about the multiverse and the planes of existence magical beings could traverse nearly blew my mind apart.
The idea that reality wasn’t singular but layered—stacked like invisible cities atop one another—lit something inside me.
I loved learning.
Always had.
Eternal student, that was my thing.
If there was a syllabus, I’d read it twice.
If there was extra credit, I’d volunteer.
But the truth?
Even with all of this—I was distracted.
I tried to forget it.
Forget him.
Asgarheim didn’t make that easy.
Every corridor hummed with magic.
The stone walls were etched with runes older than memory, and sometimes I swore they shifted when I wasn’t looking directly at them.
The air itself felt heavier here—thicker with something alive and ancient, like the Institute breathed alongside us.
Even the staircases seemed to sigh beneath the weight of centuries, worn smooth by boots, claws, talons, and things that probably didn’t have feet at all.
I mean I was taking classes like Advanced Dark Magic Defense—yes, essentially Defense Against the Dark Arts for anyone raised on wizard movies—was real. Brutally real.
We practiced shields against possession, counter-hexes, rupture barriers, and ward weaving.
I’d been hit with three controlled curses before our exam review.
History of Magic was taught by Professor Bannerman, who wore layers of midnight robes and kept a small red dragon perched casually on his shoulder like it was a fashion accessory.
The micro-dragon even corrected him once.
In Latin.
My lab partner in Elemental Theory had horns that scraped the vaulted ceiling every time he forgot to duck.
The first time he turned too fast and gouged a stone arch, the room collectively winced.
He just apologized and kept taking notes.
The Institute was everything I’d ever wanted to believe in when I was a child.
A fantasy world where magic was real and even someone like me could fit in.
But none of it stopped the pull.
Because no matter how many lectures I attended or how many runes I memorized, there was always something tugging at the edge of my awareness.
A shadow in the corridor.
A presence just out of sight.
A hunger that didn’t belong entirely to me.
I tried to bury myself in textbooks.
Tried to drown the feeling in theory and research and controlled spellwork.
But Asgarheim Runevald Institute was built on ley lines that amplified magic—and whatever bound me to Raven?
It only grew louder here.
I told myself I was focused.
Disciplined.
Evolving.
But every time the air shifted, every time the torches flickered without wind, every time my pulse jumped for no visible reason—I knew.
I hadn’t forgotten him.
Not even close.
And somewhere in the middle of all that?
I was starving.
Not metaphorically.
Not socially.
Physically.
Bone-deep, gnawing, throat-drying hunger that no amount of cafeteria food could satisfy.
Because I was avoiding it. Him.
Raven.
The Draugr.
Or maybe he was avoiding me, but that hurt more to think it.
Either way, the whispers followed him like shadows.
Nordic Revenant.
Cursed bloodline.
Cannibal ancestors punished by the All Father.
Monster.
Devil.
But none of those stories matched the man who had wrapped his wings around me in the infirmary.
None of them matched the way his voice softened when he called me his Unnasta—whatever that meant.
None of them matched the way I felt him even when he wasn’t there.
It was like I was missing a part of myself, even though I was whole.
I felt it. Felt him.
Or, well, I thought it was him—every time I relaxed it would pop up again.
The weight of someone’s eyes on me in corridors.
A shadow at the edge of my peripheral vision.
Each time I turned away from it.
Because of the warning I received from her.
Professor Kenna.
Her voice still echoed in my mind.
You are here to learn control. Not to entangle yourself with Monsters.
And I knew she was right.
I had almost let him bite me.
I had almost begged for it.
That wasn’t control.
That was surrender.
And I didn’t trust myself enough to know the difference.
But by the next Friday, the hunger had become unbearable.
Olaf could hear my stomach growling across the dining hall.
Dietrich rambled about spell-craft while I stared at my plate like it had personally offended me.
None of their chatter resonated with me. I couldn’t participate, couldn’t focus on their pleasant conversation.
“Excuse me,” I muttered.
And that desperate wave of hunger crashed into me before I even made it to my feet.