Here are the first chapters of The Nightmaric Saga. Bookmark this page — and check your inbox for future dispatches.
“Go. Live.”
To some, it’s a scream. To others, a war cry. It crosses worlds and rattles something half-buried in dreams until an exhausted college girl bolts awake.
My eyes snap open, and I lurch upright so fast the room tilts. My heart hammers as I gasp and swallow a scream. I clamp my hands over my chest as I try to pin my pulse down.
A spike of pain drills behind my eyes.
Hangover without the fun.
Or maybe it’s another death dream.
It’s hard to tell these days.
The clock beside my bed glows red: 6:00 a.m.
I fall back into my pillow, but the echo of that voice refuses to fade. It sits behind my eyes like a hot coin.
I already know I won’t get back to sleep.
“Fine,” I mutter sleepily. “We start early.”
I roll out of bed, pull on jeans, a T-shirt, a black hoodie, and drag my hair into something ponytail-adjacent. Backpack. Shoulder. Door.
Muscle memory and resignation.
Outside, the quad is almost empty. A few students drift across the paths, hoodies up, and caffeine circulating where blood should be.
I cut across the wet grass as dew soaks my sneakers.
Before sunrise, the rules feel optional.
In a few months, I’m supposed to “enter society”. People say it like I’m being knighted. No safety net. No reset button. Just me against the world.
Like that’s new.
My shoulders ache under the straps of my backpack. Could be the weight. Might be the constant grind of pretending everything is fine.
A corn muffin would fix all this.
Today deserves that small joy.
The cafeteria doors hiss shut behind me. Trapping warmth and grease in the air. Pancakes glisten under heat lamps. Oil crackles somewhere in the back. The general aroma of breakfast food clings to everything.
It’s chaos in a comforting way. Trays scraping, metal clinking, and low chatter humming through the room.
I head straight for the basket of muffins. Freshly out of the oven, the heat pours off them. Sugar and butter hang thick in the air.
My hand drifts toward a blueberry muffin. For a moment, it feels like it breathes under my fingers.
I blink.
My hand closes around a corn muffin instead.
“Cassy!”
Her voice hits as a glass dropped on tile. I flinch, pulse spiking, and turn.
Lillia barrels into me mid-hug before my brain catches up. She’s all red skirt, brown jacket, and warm arms.
For someone so small, her hugs feel like they’re trying to hold the world together.
As always, I freeze when someone decides physical contact is mandatory. You’d think I’d have adapted by now.
I have not.
“Morning to you, too,” I mumble into her shoulder.
She pulls back, grinning. “Daily corn muffin again. Keep this up, and you’ll turn into one.”
“Honestly? I’ve had worse outcomes.”
She laughs, bright and cracked. An eternal optimist, who still has that stubborn sunshine that she refuses to let fade.
Next to her, I’m a storm cloud in sneakers with my hair yanked back.
At least the muffin is warm.
“So, what’s the plan for this glorious day?” she asks, fishing a Granny Smith out of her jacket pocket and taking a loud bite.
The crunch echoes, and now I want an apple too.
“Garrison’s class is in fifteen. Then I have to head into the city and run errands. You?”
“Day off,” she says, like it’s a blessing. “Want company?”
“Sure. We can hit Julio’s after.”
I crush the muffin wrapper and bank it into the trash.
Small victories.
“I’ll meet you in the quad after class,” I say, pushing back out into the cold.
“It’s a date!” she calls as the doors swing shut.
Outside, the air bites.
For a second, I wonder, like I always do.
What horror the day has lined up for me.
There is something about city air.
The smog, noise and that constant static of possibility.
As anything could happen, but probably won’t.
I sit on a park bench, smoothie in hand, and watch the city ecosystem at work.
Across the path, a little girl fights with an ice cream cone and loses. Most of it ends up on her cheeks and shirt. Her smile stays pure as sunlight.
Her parents flank her. A woman in a blue sundress with red roses. Her father is in a worn button-up and khakis. Ordinary, warm, and annoyingly perfect.
I blink for a second as something gets in my eye.
One of the men picks up their daughter and rests her on his shoulders. The little girl just laughs as he dances around her.
The sight hits harder than it should. Something loosens in my chest, and then tightens again.
I would be lying if I said I did not want that. The safe kind of boring. People who wait for you. A place that is actually mine and not just the cheapest room within bus distance.
But that kind of fate belongs to other people. I have made my peace with that.
Mostly.
“There you are, Cassy. Look at you with your little smoothie.”
Lillia’s voice skips across the moment and shatters it. I huff a laugh.
“I was enjoying the peace and quiet,” I say. “You scared it off.”
She drops onto the bench beside me. “And you got a smoothie without me,” Lillia places her hand over her mouth, feigning offense. “The betrayal!”
Her acting pulls real laughter out of me. “You were late, and I got thirsty.”
Truth is, Garrison’s class dug under my skin again.
The images of a church on fire and the screams.
Those dark, glowing red eyes spouting a terrible line.
“Who are we to deny you meeting your precious god faster?” It says, with a cruel and indifferent chuckle.
Even remembering it tightens my stomach.
“Garrison talked about the Purges again, didn’t he?” Lillia says, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah. Another field trip down misery lane.”
“It is strange,” she says. “That the war feels like yesterday, and it was a few hundred years ago.”
I do not answer.
I don’t tell her how something in me leans forward when the old footage plays. Not because I enjoy it, but because I need to understand it. I rewind the worst clips. I study the formations, the decisions, the way chaos hardened into procedure. The point where mercy stopped fitting into the equation.
That part of me scares me.
The rest of me resents that fear.
“Yeah,” I say at last. “Weird.”
She squeezes my shoulder. I let her.
The Shadow War is supposed to be history now. Sanitized. Mythologized. Schoolbooks call it mankind’s glorious stand against its own creations.
Proof that we stayed in control.
The truth, the fragments that survived the censors, is not glorious. It’s obscene. People turned into weapons. Choices made too efficiently. The Original Seven. Darkness. Things a normal mind should recoil from.
I do recoil.
I just don’t look away.
“Cassy. Cassandra. Hey.”
Lillia snaps me out of the spiral. She waves a hand in front of my face.
“I fell into the rabbit hole again, didn’t I?”
“You swan-dived in,” she says. “Do you even remember what I was saying?”
“Some of it,” I lie.
Her look says she knows, but she lets it go. “Come on. Errands. Julio’s. Carbs. Move.”
She stands and offers her hand. I take it and let her pull me up.
I glance back at the family.
The girl is on the ground now, still wearing her ice cream on her face as she smiles. Her father kneels beside her with a napkin. Her mother laughs at something I cannot hear.
Perfect again.
Too perfect.
A shadow drapes over the park and smothers the sunlight. A low whistle threads through the air. Long and rising.
“Do you hear that?” Lillia asks.
“Yeah. And it is getting louder.”
We both look up.
Something enormous tears through the clouds and falls fast. Wrong shape for a civilian shuttle. Wrong angle.
Wrong everything.
For one suspended second, I stay still.
Then the world goes white.
Then black.
Heat wakes me.
Not gentle warmth. Radiant, prickling heat pressed against my face. It smells like gasoline and electrical fire, and cooked metal.
I blink grit out of my eyes.
The sky is wrong.
The park is gone.
No, it’s still here, just buried under ruin.
Trees are ripped up, benches splintered, and paths cracked open.
Smoke drifts through the wreckage as it has nowhere to go.
Lillia.
She had been right beside me.
“Lillia?” I say, my voice dry.
I try to stand. My body shuts that down fast.
Pain flares through every joint and knocks me flat.
“Okay, Cass,” I mutter. “Let’s try that one more time.”
I plant my hands, grit my teeth, and push. Pain roars through me.
I get upright anyway. The world tilts, and then steadies into something jagged and wrong.
A scream cuts through the haze.
High and desperate.
“Please don’t let that be the mom,” I whisper, already knowing it is.
I limp toward the sound.
The woman in the blue sundress is on her knees. The roses are shredded and blackened. Her arms are locked around a small, limp body.
“Someone, please. She is barely breathing,” Her voice cracks on every word.
Tears fall into ash.
I want to help, I do, but Lillia is out here somewhere.
She was right beside me and couldn’t be far.
The park is a massacre.
Smoke and charred metal litter the place.
People are wandering around as they try to comprehend what they’re seeing.
A fallen tree trunk blocks part of the path. It’s burnt through, the wood curled upward by the heat.
“Over here!” Someone shouts. “Someone’s trapped!”
I should keep searching for Lillia. That’s all that matters more than anything. But I cannot just walk past someone pinned under debris and pretend I did not hear it.
What would Lillia do?
She would help.
With a sigh, I jog toward the voice.
A slab of broken concrete has someone pinned. Two men are already there, straining against it.
“If we all get on this side, we can slide it up,” one pants.
In theory.
In practice, we will see.
We fan out along the edge. The surface is cold and rough under my palms.
“Okay, on three. One, two, three.”
We heave. My arms scream. The slab shifts, groaning inch by inch. Someone dives under and drags the trapped body free.
“Got them,” they say, through several breaths.
We let the concrete slam back and stumble away, our lungs burning.
I turn.
The path behind us is blocked again, now by a charred wooden beam.
The person we pulled out wears a uniform. Military cut, scorched, and torn. Not the police. Not militia. Something else.
His skin is wrong. Not burned. Warped. Like it is moving under the soot.
Not from the crash.
Not normal.
Later problem. Right now: Lillia.
“I have to go,” I say, already turning.
Through the haze, a familiar shape forms. Torn skirt. Ripped blouse. Hair tangled and wild.
“Lillia.”
I sprint and watch her drop to the ground.
“Lillia, hey. Look at me. Are you okay?”
She is upright somehow. Shaking. Breathing too fast. Scratches and cuts, but no broken bones. Relief hits so hard my eyes sting.
Then she looks at me.
Her irises are not brown anymore.
Violet. Faint and swirling, like smoke trapped in glass.
“Do you hear her too?” she whispers.
“Who?” I ask, but she is already collapsing. Her body folds into my chest.
“And so it begins,” I say, swirling red wine in a glass that costs more than this planet’s median income.
Crash reports crawl across the holo-screen behind me. Names. Numbers. Speculation. The casualty estimate settles exactly where I wanted it. High enough to spark panic. Low enough that none of the wrong people start asking the right questions.
She was not on the ship. I made sure of that.
I taste iron beneath the fruit.
Faith in manipulation or playing god as some would say. I call it patience.
Worlds never change on their own. They have to be shoved.
The footage loops. Sirens. Smoke. A face flickers in the margin. Her friend. The one who isn’t supposed to be anywhere near this board.
I sigh.
“Well,” I murmur, “let us see what you do with this one.”
“Are you going to keep monologuing or actually play your turn, Arcana? Some of us have lives.”
Lilith’s voice cuts through the candlelight like a knife meant for smiling instead of killing. The white feathers of her wings arch behind her, catching the glow.
I do not look up from my hand. “Patience. I know it is not one of your virtues, but try.”
“You talk like you are winning,” she says. She draws a card without breaking eye contact.
“I always talk like I am winning,” I say. “Half the time it is even true.”
She exhales a half-laugh, half-growl. “You are insufferable.”
“And yet,” I say, placing my next card with deliberate calm, “you keep coming back.”
Her gaze flicks to the screen, then back to the table. “You think she will bite? Crashes happen every day. The news cycle forgets them in forty-eight hours.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe she ignores it. Maybe she imprints the wrong soul and turns another universe into a half-finished tragedy.” I fan my pieces across the table. “But she will feel it. She always does.”
I reveal my hand.
Infinite loop. Clean and Cruel.
Lilith groans and throws her cards aside. “I hate you.”
“You love the attempt,” I say as I gather the cards. “Again?”
“Obviously.” She is already reshuffling. “One of these centuries, you are going to misplay.”
I glance at the crash feed while the deck bridges through her fingers.
“Try to keep up,” I whisper.
“I need a new coffee place,” I mumble, sipping something that used to be coffee and now tastes like burnt regret. “The one on East Eleven has given up.”
I know I’m lying.
I’ll be back there tomorrow at seven thirty like always. Routine looks like stability if you squint.
Traffic slides past in streaks of light. People drift along the sidewalk with their eyes glued to holoscreens. Entire worlds flickering inches from their faces. For half a block, my steps sync with theirs. Accidental unity. Then the rhythm breaks, and I am alone again.
The Capitol steps rise ahead, white and self-important.
“Fresh hell,” I mutter, tossing the empty cup as I head inside.
The Hall of Law and Order smells like polish and recycled air. Security scanners thrum softly.
“Sally. How was your weekend?” Alan calls from his post. Round, cheerful, and flirting through bad jokes and worse puns. Harmless and almost comforting.
“Oh, you know,” I say. “Read briefs, prepped motions, watched half a season of some trash show. Wild times.”
He laughs. The marble makes it echo.
If he knew who my clients were, he wouldn’t be laughing. Not out of fear, but out of instinct. Normals like him barely count as real to most of that roster.
I ride the elevator up, catch my reflection in the mirrored wall, and spot another gray hair.
Fantastic, the weekly salon visits have just become bi-weekly. At this rate, I’ll be grey by forty.
My office is nice and homey as I drop onto my office chair, spin once to bleed off irritation, and pull a file toward me.
A complaint against one of Veronica’s free clinics.
Technically not hers, legally distant, and realistically obvious.
Some mid-level officials are furious that people are receiving treatment without paying enough for it.
I flag it for an associate with very precise instructions: fix it. Put the fear of the Saint in them if necessary.
I am halfway through another file when someone knocks.
No one knocks.
Not for me.
“Come in,” I say.
The door opens.
I see the gray skin, red irises. And feel my mouth go dry.
Shadows do not come to me, I go to them.
That is the rule.
This one wears a pressed suit and tie. No armor. No cloak. No theatrics. If you ignored the eyes and the skin, he could pass for any forgettable bureaucrat.
“Relax, Ms. Roxian,” he says with a polite smile. “You are not hallucinating. A well-dressed Shadow is indeed standing in your office.”
I stand, because sitting feels rude even though they do not care. My knees complain. “Do you have a name?”
“For our purposes, Alex will do,” he says. “And you can call me whatever sells the fiction. May I?”
He offers a folder.
I take it and flip it open.
“You are shitting me,” I say before my brain can stop my mouth.
His smirk sharpens. “Darkness said you would be refreshing.”
If that is a compliment, it is the most backhanded one I’ve received this month.
I scan the pages again.
“Quarantine breach,” I say, pointing to a single paragraph. “Of this.”
“Yes,” he replies. “We had it locked down so tightly that Tartarus complained about the competition. Unfortunately, even chains rust.”
“How bad?” I ask, pacing around. “Spare me the poetic half-truths. I bill by the hour.”
He leans against the door frame as if we are discussing a zoning permit instead of a possible world-ending event.
“If it behaves as it did on Cassandrea,” he says, “emergency services collapse first. Then the infrastructure. Then, global systems. If no one intervenes, it spreads off-world.”
“You stopped it before,” I say. “That is what this file claims.”
“With great sacrifice,” he says quietly. “We lost a lot of good people.”
For a breath, his eyes go distant. Then the mask slides back into place.
“What do you want from me?” I ask, dropping into my chair again. The file slaps against the desk.
“You will be our Normal liaison,” he says. “Point of contact. The people of Elispa Six will tell you what they are doing, and you will tell us.”
“And you?” I ask. “What will you be doing while I play spy and drown in paperwork?”
“Handling it,” he says. “Our best are already en route.”
The word hangs between us.
He straightens. “You have a lot to read. I suggest you begin.”
He walks out without waiting for agreement.
The door clicks shut.
I stare at the word stamped in red across the folder.
QUARANTINE BREACH.
If this is what they call handled, we’re already screwed.
Persephone quietly watches, waiting to see how everything unfolds
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