The Last Raven #3

Chapter 1

day one

Callie woke slowly.

Not the bolt-upright kind, not the kind where you surface from sleep already fighting something. This was a careful waking—the kind where you stay still for a beat and take inventory before you agree to reality.

Outside, a car slid past on dry pavement, the sound soft as a brushstroke. Somewhere down the block, a door shut with quiet domestic finality. A garbage truck beeped once in reverse, distant enough to be background, close enough to be true. The furnace ticked, then settled. A dog barked exactly one time, halfheartedly, as if it had remembered it was supposed to guard something and then decided against it.

Rochester mornings weren’t industrial. No grinding metal. No constant sirens. Just light and air and people going about their small lives like nothing was holding a knife behind their backs.

The sun came through the blinds in pale stripes. Cool, bracing air lingered in the room, and it hit her with the same strange feeling she used to get in September—back-to-school mornings, the kind where your backpack feels too heavy, and your thoughts are already running late.

Back to school.

Except she wasn’t a kid, and this wasn’t a classroom, and the thing waiting for her wasn’t a math test. It was a question she couldn’t stop hearing.

Am I going to die?

Callie lay there and stared at the ceiling, letting the ordinary morning noises exist without trying to turn them into omens. Her body felt normal—tired in the way that came from sleeping but not resting, but intact. No buzzing under her skin. No crackle. No afterimage of light or sound. No silence so complete it felt like the world had been erased and rewritten around her.

She pressed her palm into the mattress. Solid.

Still here.

Everyone kept telling her she wasn’t alone. Jess said it like a promise, like she could brute-force safety through sheer will. Isabel said it like a warning, careful and edged. Solrien didn’t say it at all. Solrien simply existed somewhere behind Callie’s thoughts like a boundary line you didn’t cross.

But this first minute—this was hers.

Grief arrived anyway, because grief doesn’t wait for permission or logic. It recognized the shape of the moment, the crack in the foundation, and moved in like it belonged there.

Denial came first, polite and reasonable. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe stress. Perhaps she’d had a panic episode and called it magic because she didn’t want to be boring.

Anger followed fast, hotter than it had any right to be at seven in the morning. You don’t get to do this to me. I didn’t ask. I didn’t agree. I didn’t even browse the brochure.

Fear came last, quiet and patient. What if it happens again? What if it happens in public? What if the next time doesn’t end with her standing there pretending she’s fine?

Callie rolled onto her side and reached for the notebook on the nightstand. It was already open, like her hand knew what it needed before her mind caught up.

Her finger traced the words she’d written there earlier.

We are not the lost.

The phrase didn’t fix anything. It didn’t promise safety or answers. But it held. Like a railing. Like a remembered rule.

Her throat tightened anyway.

She couldn’t tell Jess. Not this part. Not yet.

She wanted to tell her everything—God, she wanted to—because the urge to confess was almost physical. Jess would come over, make coffee, sit too close on the couch, and pretend she wasn’t watching Callie’s face every second. Jess would say something steady, grounded, and practical, and Callie would feel her nervous system unclench.

But not this truth.

The old truth—the one she’d already made peace with—was easier.

I love you.

That one lived in her quietly, known weight, familiar shape. It hurt, but it didn’t scare her.

This new thing—the watching, the knowing, the sense that the world was beginning to show her its seams—scared her because it came with obligation.

Because it immediately pointed at Jess.

Picking up her pen, Callie waited a moment, watching for a tremor like the other night—the church thing, that wrongness that had made her feel like her bones were about to hum.

Nothing happened.

Her hand stayed steady, annoyingly obedient, as if it hadn’t been the same hand that had gone cold and useless when the light hit. She blinked at it, half offended, then let out a small breath through her nose. With a shrug that was more relief than confidence, she set the tip to paper.

Day one.

I woke up, and everything looked normal, which should have been comforting. It wasn’t. It just means the world is behaving, and now I don’t trust it when it behaves.

She paused and listened again. The apartment answered with ordinary things: a soft creak from the building settling, a muffled voice from a neighbor’s television through the wall, the distant whoosh of traffic at an intersection. Nothing supernatural. Nothing dramatic.

Callie kept writing anyway, because she had learned something important—if she didn’t name the thing, the thing would still exist. It would just have the advantage.

Everyone keeps telling me I’m not alone.

Jess says it like a promise. Isabel says it like a reminder of consequences. Solrien doesn’t say it. She just…stays there in the background of my thoughts like a line I’m not supposed to cross.

Her handwriting looked too neat for how she felt, which made her want to laugh and also made her want to throw the notebook across the room. Instead, she wrote the part that mattered.

I can’t tell Jess. Not yet.

I want to tell her everything except the new truth. The old truth is inconvenient, but it belongs to me: I love her.

She read it back once and felt her throat tighten in that quiet, humiliating way it always did when she stumbled too close to honesty. She didn’t try to fix it. She just let it exist.

Then she moved on, because she didn’t have the luxury of lingering.

If I am to save Jess, I need to train.

She underlined it once, not dramatically, just firmly, like she was signing her name on a form she couldn’t un-sign.

The snapshot flickered at the edge of her mind—light, sound, then silence, then her standing there pretending she was fine—and her stomach dipped as if the memory had a hook in it. She waited for her hand to shake, for her skin to prickle, for some warning that the world was about to tilt again.

Still nothing.

Callie tapped the pen lightly against the paper, suspicious of the calm.

“Fine,” she murmured. “We’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

She flipped to a fresh page and wrote a header that made her roll her eyes at herself even as it helped.

Ritual Callie.

Under it, she started a list—not a spell, not an oath, not some dramatic proclamation. A plan. Something survivable.

Breathe before I speak.

Write it down.

Act normal until I understand what abnormal means.

Do not spiral in public.

Do not tell Jess until I know what I’m telling her.

She stared at the last line, then added one more, because refusing to become entirely solemn felt like its own kind of protection.

Wear the star underwear. Because why not?

That coaxed a small, reluctant smile out of her. Not joy. Not peace. Just a reminder that she was still herself inside all this.

Callie capped the pen, closed the notebook, and set it down on the nightstand like a promise she could touch.

Then she looked at the clock and swore out loud.

“Oh fuck. I have to go to work.”

There it was—the human part, the ridiculousness that kept the world from becoming a myth too fast. She swung her legs out of bed and stood up, grounding herself in motion.

Ritual Callie meant the basics. Shower. Coffee. Clothes that said competent without trying too hard. Hair pulled back, not because she wanted to look severe but because she needed to feel in control of something.

She opened the underwear drawer again and paused.

Of course she did.

Buried beneath the sensible cotton and the reliable black pairs was the impulse buy she’d made weeks ago. Silk, or close enough to it. Smooth when she slid it between her fingers. Cool, even now.

The dressing room memory surfaced uninvited.

Jess was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, pretending not to care. Callie held the fabric up with a half-smile, already bracing for a joke.

“That,” Jess had said slowly, head tilting. “That actually sounds more like you than me.”

Callie had felt her composure wobble—just a little.

“With lace?” she’d shot back, light and fast, not daring to look at her.

Jess had only shrugged. “You like stories,” she’d said. “Even the secret ones.”

Callie had paid and left before she could overthink it.

Now, in the quiet of her bedroom, she unfolded the fabric again. The pattern was subtle—tiny stars, barely visible unless you were close. Not a costume. Not lingerie-for-an-audience.

Private. Intentional.

She slipped them on and stood there for a second, grounding herself in the choice.

“I’m strong,” she said quietly.

Then, because it was also true and she was done pretending it wasn’t, “And I’m sexy.”

Her eyes drifted, traitorous, to the corner where the cosplay bin sat like it had opinions.

“Oh no,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

The lid was cracked just enough to reveal a fox ear. A glove. The spine of a book she absolutely pretended was ironic. A necklace that looked like it had been purchased under the influence of adrenaline and late-night optimism.

Callie snorted softly.

“Oh, she of the interchangeable accessory display,” she whispered solemnly, raising two fingers like she was swearing an oath. “Hear me.”

She gestured toward the bin.

“Ear of fox. Necklace of questionable origin. Book of smut, dog-eared and annotated.” A pause.

“Sacred leggings, black as my unresolved issues.”

She dropped her hand, lips twitching.

“No. Stop it. This is not a montage.”

This was day one.

She stared at the words for a second, waiting for dread to rush in and claim them.

It didn’t. Not exactly.

This wasn’t a countdown to her last day. It wasn’t a prophecy calendar.

Day one meant the next day. The first day, she stopped pretending she could stay on the sidelines of Jess’s life and still call it love.

Her resolve would flicker—she knew that already—but she could practice through the flicker. She could learn. She could train. She could stand.

Day one meant jeans. Sensible shoes. Lip balm. A bra she trusted. Underwear with stars no one else needed to know about.

She grabbed her bag, checked her keys twice because she was not going to tempt the universe, and headed out.

The morning air hit her the second she stepped outside—cool, softly bracing, clean enough that it made her lungs feel more honest. The kind of air that made you walk a little straighter, like the world was quietly daring you to show up.

On the drive, sunlight flashed off windshields. A jogger in a neon jacket passed at an intersection, cheerful and oblivious. Someone sipped coffee at a stoplight, steam curling up in the bright air like it was the only magic in the world.

Normal life. Loud in its simplicity.

Her senses felt turned up—not overwhelming, just sharper. Focused. Like the world had shifted from soft focus to high definition. She noticed details she usually wouldn’t: the way the trees held onto the last stubborn leaves, the exact pitch of a crosswalk beep, the smell of someone’s cinnamon pastry drifting out of a bakery when she rolled her window down.

At a red light, a phrase surfaced in her mind, steady as a hand on her spine.

Anchor to breathe. Anchor to what you know.

Solrien.

Not comfort. A touchstone.

Callie exhaled, shoulders easing just a fraction. She wasn’t alone. Not the way people are supposed to be nice. The other way—the way that meant responsibility.

By the time she parked, her resolve had settled into place like a coat she’d worn all her life.

Not today.

Today, she would be normal Callie. She would enjoy herself. Laugh with Janice and Marta. Smile at kids looking for dinosaur books. Shelve books and pretend the air wasn’t full of invisible geometry.

She stepped out of the car, adjusted her jacket, and walked toward the library.

At the front doors, she paused for half a second—not hesitation, not fear, just a deliberate moment of choice.

“Won’t happen today,” she murmured under her breath, like a small spell she didn’t fully believe in but intended to test anyway.

Then she pulled the doors open and walked inside with her head high.

This was day one.