Chapter 30-Serena
There was a time when I used to sleep with the lights on.
Not because I was afraid of the dark.
Because I was afraid of what moved inside it.
I was five the first time I remember seeing one clearly.
Not just a flicker in the corner of my eye.
Not a shadow.
Not imagination.
He was a man in a brown suit with a split lip and hollow cheeks. He stood at the foot of my bed and stared at me like he had been waiting.
I remember thinking he looked tired.
I remember thinking he was sad.
I remember screaming anyway.
My aunt came first.
Then my uncle.
They turned on the light.
There was nothing there.
But I could still see him.
Even in the light.
He didn’t vanish when brightness filled the room. He just grew thinner, like smoke being stretched.
“He’s right there,” I sobbed, pointing.
They followed my finger into empty space.
That was the beginning.
After that, there were always more.
At school.
At the grocery store.
In the back seat of the car.
Sometimes they whispered.
Sometimes they wept.
Sometimes they just watched.
I learned quickly that saying what I saw made things worse.
Doctors.
Specialists.
Therapists.
A priest who sprinkled holy water on my forehead while muttering about oppression and influence.
I learned silence.
I learned to smile and say I was fine.
I learned to pretend I didn’t see the woman with burn marks standing beside my locker.
Or the boy dripping river water onto the cafeteria floor.
Home stopped feeling safe.
Not because my aunt and uncle were cruel.
They were tired.
Frustrated.
Embarrassed.
They whispered about me behind closed doors.
“She’s disturbed.”
“She needs structure.”
“She needs discipline.”
I needed someone to believe me.
But belief is a rare gift when your truth is inconvenient.
So I shrank.
I folded myself inward.
I became small.
Invisible.
The girl who didn’t cause trouble.
The girl who didn’t speak unless spoken to.
The girl who stared at nothing because staring at nothing was easier than staring at ghosts.
I thought that would be my life.
Hiding.
Apologizing for existing.
Pretending I wasn’t different.
Then came the letter.
Asgarheim Runevald Institute.
An invitation written in ink that shimmered faintly when I tilted it toward the light.
I didn’t know what it meant.
Only that for the first time in my life, something had found me on purpose.
When I arrived, I expected more fear.
More suspicion.
More of the same quiet rejection.
Instead—the walls hummed with magic.
The staircases shifted.
The air felt thick with things older than language.
And no one blinked when a ghost passed through a corridor.
No one told me I was imagining it.
No one called a priest.
For the first time—I wasn’t strange.
I wasn’t broken.
I was gifted.
That realization alone would have been enough.
But then—
There was him.
Raven.
The Draugr.
The Monster everyone avoided.
The Revenant whose hunger had terrified an entire generation of students.
He saw me.
Not the quiet girl.
Not the frightened child.
Not the girl who flinched at every whisper.
He saw me.
And he did not look afraid.
He looked claimed.
Like he had found something he had been searching for without knowing it.
When he called me Unnasta for the first time, I didn’t understand the word.
But I understood the tone.
Reverence.
Possession.
Devotion.
No one had ever looked at me like that.
No one had ever touched me like I was something precious.
He did.
He does.
I used to fear the dead.
Now I command them.
I used to apologize for my power.
Now I wield it.
I used to shrink.
Now I rise.
Not because I stopped being afraid.
But because I stopped being alone.
Raven stands beside me like a wall carved from night.
Not to cage me.
To guard me.
And in guarding me, he has allowed me to bloom.
The ghosts don’t frighten me anymore.
They don’t crowd my space.
They don’t pull at me like drowning hands.
They answer.
Respectfully.
Because I am no longer the scared little girl in the bedroom with the lights on.
I am Serena Notte.
Necromancer.
Mate to a being forged in curse and shadow.
And here—on Asgarheim—I belong.
Not because I was chosen by fate.
Not because of bloodlines or power.
Because I was seen.
Loved.
Claimed.
Marked by his hunger.
I rest my head against Raven’s chest now, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart—a heart that once beat only for survival.
Now it beats for me.
For us.
For a future that no longer feels like something fragile.
“I used to be so afraid,” I murmur against his skin.
His fingers comb gently through my hair.
“You never needed to be.”
“I did,” I whisper. “Until you.”
He tilts my chin up, eyes glowing softly in the dim light of the castle chamber.
“You were never meant to walk this world alone, Unnasta.”
No.
I wasn’t.
And I won’t again.
I once believed home was a house with lights left on.
Now I know better.
Home is arms that never let go.
A voice that calls you beloved.
A bond that cannot be severed by death or time.
Home? It’s him.
And for the first time in my life—I am not afraid of the dark. Or my hunger. Or his.
Because that’s what marked me.
That’s what brought me here and sealed my fate—and honestly? This is the only place I want to be.
With him.
My Monster.
Raven.