The balcony door looked untouched.
Not a single crack, not a splinter of protest—just flawless wood beneath her fingertips.
Aeris stared at it like it might dissolve if she blinked too hard. Slowly, she reached out, trailing her hand along the frame where Kael had forced it open hours ago.
"Of course it's fixed," she murmured, voice barely audible. "Nothing stays broken long around here. Not visibly, at least."
Aeris pressed her forehead against the wood for a moment, just breathing. Just… being. Letting the silence wrap around her like a thin blanket that couldn't quite warm her.
Then, she turned the handle, slipped inside, and locked the door behind her. She opened the wardrobe Maya had helped her organize earlier, fingers brushing past folded uniforms until she found an old oversized shirt and a pair of flannel shorts.
Aeris plopped onto the bed with a soft grunt, curling into the pillows. Her limbs felt too heavy. But it was her mind that kept spinning, tumbling over everything—the House Selection, the taste of her own rage still clinging to the roof of her mouth.
The four heirs of Noxmere. Dangerous. Desired. Untouchable. All of them had their eyes on her, as if she was just another misplaced mortal tossed into their world like a coin into a cursed fountain.
Aeris pulled the blankets over her body, but it did nothing to quiet the sensation under her skin.
What the hell is happening to me?
Her mind clawed for logic, trying to make sense of it all. Maybe this was some elaborate hallucination, maybe she would still be at her old school, expelled, standing outside the principal's office, watching the rain blur the windows. Maybe none of this was real. Maybe she was losing her mind.
But sleep came for her and with it… the dream.
Aeris was eleven again.
The orphanage, usually a cacophony of children sneaking into the kitchen to steal cookies and their bedtime giggles, had fallen into a silence so deep it felt alive. Not even the distant hum of the night radio Sister Marlene always left on.
Only the sound of her own breath and the coppery scent that clung to the air.
Aeris walked down the corridor, barefoot. The chill of the floor seeped up through her skin, bone-deep and unforgiving. Her pajamas stuck to her damp skin, like they were afraid too.
The hallway light flickered overhead, an old, dying bulb. Each blink made the world stutter like a broken reel in a horror film.
She turned to the corner and saw her. Sister Marlene
She lay sprawled on the cold kitchen tiles, head tilted at an unnatural angle, Marlene's white blouse was soaked through, crimson blooming across her stomach. One pale hand stretched toward the stove, fingers curled as if trying to grasp the last seconds of her life. Her eyes, once warm, endlessly kind, were open. Empty. Staring.
Aeris froze, her scream stayed lodged in her throat. She stood there — small, trembling, barefoot in her owl-print pajamas, the world spinning too fast around her.
Something warm trickled down her wrist. She looked down.
Red. Thick. Wet.
Her fingers shook, the blood coated her hands. Aeris didn't remember walking closer, but suddenly she was there. She knelt beside Marlene's cold body, stupidly, trying to shake her awake, shouting her name over and over through chattering teeth.
The blood smeared further, across her arms. Her cheeks. Her lips. Her face. Everywhere.
Even at eleven, something inside her knew—this moment would never leave her. It would be tattooed onto her soul.
They found her like that. Curled beside Elira's body– her tiny frame smeared in blood. Someone called the police. Someone else muttered a prayer, eyes wide with something worse than fear.
They said she was possessed, cursed. The girl who killed her caretaker.
******
Aeris jolted awake, her skin was damp. She pressed trembling fingers to her sternum, as if she could trap it.
Air caught in her throat like a scream that never made it out. The scent of lavender detergent clung to the walls, sickly-sweet, like it was trying to pretend the past hadn't followed her here.
Aeris stayed like that for a long moment, curled into herself, the blanket bunched at her waist. Then she whispered into the dark, like a curse… or a confession. "I didn't kill her." Her voice trembled, she didn't know who she was trying to convince.
******
In the west wing of Noxmere's highest tower.
The bookshelves crammed with tomes so cursed their bindings wept salt and rust. Some books were chained, others breathing as if they resented being disturbed.
Scrolls lay sprawled across his dark wood desk. Damien sat at the chair, surrounded by chaos only a mind like his could tame. He didn't move much, save for the flick of his ink-stained fingers and the occasional tilt of his head — predator-sharp, contemplative.
A half-burnt candle guttered beside him, flame catching the glint of his silver-rimmed glasses. His white shirt clung to him, sleeves were rolled just below the elbow.
The devil scholar was his element, neck-deep in forbidden knowledge, and completely, utterly focused.
Until her face broke through the walls he had built.
Aeris Vexley.
The girl who had somehow glitched the House Selection tiles, and bent a system that wasn't meant to bend. Damien inhaled, sharp and involuntary, and a curl of magic bled from the ink at his fingertips, searing the edge of a page.
He pushed his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose and leaned closer to the scroll unfurled before him – a spell written in demon script by one of his ancestors, layered with protections, and prophecy wards.
The ink shimmered when he whispered the incantation in a language long dead to mortals. The symbols rearranged themselves, revealing deeper text. A lock of his raven-black hair fell over his brow, wild and untamed. He didn't bother brushing it away.
There it was. "Interference with soul-bound sorting should be impossible—unless the subject's essence is sealed, fractured… or not entirely human."
Not human.
Damien had suspected it the moment she stepped onto the stones — the way the magic beneath her stuttered, glitched, hesitated like a breath caught in a dying throat. Now, it had been written in demon script, bound with blood-oaths. There were no errors, no room for ambiguity.
He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, his irises flicking with that hellish crimson that only burned when his mind moved too fast.
Curiosity was a dangerous thing for devils. For Damien, it was the rarest. But Aeris wasn't just a curiosity.
She was a fault line disguised as a girl.
Damien reached for the obsidian goblet, poured the thick wine into his glass and leaned back in his chair.
There was no name yet for what she was.
"You're not just a disruption," he murmured to the empty room. "You're the crack in the system."
And devils loved nothing more than broken things they could rebuild to their liking.