You need to understand a lot

Grace screamed in her room as if her lungs were on fire, she had fallen from where she was sitting by the window, now curled up in a fetal position on the floor, she was pulling her hair in a failed attempt to ease the pain in her head, causing even more pain in her scalp. Several flashes of memories passed through her mind, visions not only of her, but of her grandmother with her grandfather, her parents, voices echoed everywhere, it was as if they were attacking her.

Images formed clearer in her mind, as if she herself were present in the moments that happened.

“This family is cursed, Oliver. Give up, he will only take you to hell, don’t trust him.”

It was a vision of Ezden and Oliver, walking together in a dense, dark forest, hand in hand, enjoying some of the stillness of the night. The redhead had a sad expression on his face.

“I’ll do it, for both of us.”

Grace was attacked by several more visions, until another one came to her again.

“Promise me, Ezden. Promise me you’ll put an end to this if our plan doesn’t work.”

___

“Do you think it’s safe to leave him here?”

“Of course, my love, only a true Valefar can know the true value of this book. For others, it will just be a silly book with no content that makes sense, just jumbled words.”

She saw her grandparents between two bookshelves, tall and packed with old-looking books. They had a youthful appearance, full of life, very different from how she remembered them.

In all her euphoria, Grace didn't notice when Viktor entered the room, kneeling in front of her, trying to make her let go of her own hair. However, Grace couldn't, flashes and flashes of images flashed in her mind, images from Ezren's diary continued to appear before her, several shelves of books shone in front of her, the smell of glue and paper invaded her nostrils.

She recognized the place, it was the library where she herself worked. Her eyes snapped open, uttering the words she was completely sure of at that moment.

“I know where the diary is.”

Grace recovered, breathing heavily, still quite dazed from the dream she had, her body, despite everything, was strangely relaxed and rested, even the fall hadn't hurt. She looked around the room several times before, hoping to see Oliver's specter, confusing Viktor who followed her movements, hoping to see something Grace was looking for.

“Grace, what happened? I woke up to you screaming.” Viktor asked, helping her sit on the floor. “Speaking of which, what were you doing lying on the floor? Was the bed very uncomfortable?”

"No no. I didn’t even go to bed.” Grace leaned on Viktor's forearm to get up. She looked at his face, she herself was still very confused after everything that happened. Noticing that he still looked like he had been woken up in the middle of the night scared, which had been true. "What time is it?"

Viktor helped her get up, taking her to the bed, and sitting there. “I don't know what time it is, it must be early in the morning, I don't think it's been long since I went to sleep, I still worked a little before going to bed. Speaking of which, what do you mean you didn’t go to bed earlier?”

“I was sitting by the window, but I ended up dozing off and I had like a vision, the whole clairvoyance thing, you know?” Grace continued after he nodded signaling that he understood. “I don't even know how to explain it properly, Oliver, the name of the ghost, he showed me some visions of the past and how he was killed, and in the end he showed me these visions to help me find out where the diary is.”

Viktor furrowed his eyebrows. “Just like that?” He found it strange, ghosts don't usually communicate with the living, not as materialized as Grace explained to him. Although the Valefar family had natural clairvoyance, they were able to see things better, but Dante never commented anything about this type of vision or contact. “And what do you mean, ghost?”

"I think so. When the vision or dream started, he just said like… ‘finally I can talk to you’ and I start talking and showing him the things he wants. It was so strange, Viktor, I could feel everything that was unfolding in the scene, apparently Oliver is Ezden, one of my ancestors, were a couple. He was killed by Ezden's brother Lucien.”

“Lucien!?” Viktor was impressed, he didn't know much, but Dante had told him the stories of the Valefar family while he was mentoring with Soraya. Lucien was like a taboo in the family, having been excommunicated by his own father after he murdered his brother's boyfriend, so crazy about eternal glory that he lost his own humanity along the way.

"Yes. I'm sure that was his name. Why the surprise?” Grace asked.

Viktor wondered in his mind if he really should tell her this dark side of the family. If he didn't tell her, apparently there were other things he wanted her to know and would make her find out eventually, whether he told her or not.

“Let's go to the kitchen, there we can eat something and I can explain to you what I know about it. It’s not a pretty story or anything like that, quite harrowing to be honest.” With that, Viktor and Grace left the room where they were, following the hallway that led them to the kitchen.

Arriving in the kitchen, Grace sat down at the table, waiting for the boy with her to do the same, but he went to the stove, putting a kettle on to heat water, taking out a can, which she knew from yesterday, that he kept herbal tea bags in. Going to the refrigerator, Viktor took the pitcher of ice water and filled a glass, turning to Grace and handing the glass to her.

It even seemed like he knew his throat was scratchy from his screams.

Viktor prepared his usual tea, sitting at the table with a steaming cup of tea in his hands. Unlike the other conversation they had before, now he no longer had such a downcast and worried expression, he was more relaxed. Grace took this moment to admire the boy's appearance, Viktor had fair skin, equally light eyes with a green color and if you looked closely, you could see a little light brown surrounding his pupil, if she wasn't wrong in her assumption, the woman was almost sure it was a type of central heterochromia. On her arms it was possible to see several tattoos that she didn't understand the meaning of, but which were pleasant to see, as a tattooed person, she knew that sometimes tattoos didn't need to have a meaning.

This thought took her to the cemetery at night, where she could recognize him by the tattoo on his hand, something that led her to think about what he would be doing there that day. Grace knew that it was her grandfather who asked him to pick her up, but she still didn't know what he was doing at her grandfather's house.

“What were you doing at my grandfather’s house?” The question came out before Grace could control her tongue or reason about what she was asking. She watched as he furrowed his eyebrows at the surprise of the question.

“Remember the murders I talked about with you?” Viktor asked, continuing when he received a nod in agreement. “Your grandfather was the one who looked after the cemetery, he contacted me to go in there and try to find what was making things disappear. But it ended up that I discovered it without wanting to do it or even researching it.”

“Do you regret it?” Grace asked, finishing the rest of the water that was in her glass, unfortunately the water was very cold and she was drinking it little by little.

“Of what, exactly?”

“Having stayed. I believe it wasn't in your plans to stay here and go down this rabbit hole that became my life, to have someone to basically take care of you, go through all this, fight ghosts. That’s what I mean.” Grace explained.

Viktor sighed before responding. “To be honest with you, I had no plans to stay here, but I've been denying this city for years, I've been denying myself to be here, to use my magic, my own heritage and a part of my family that still lives here. I think falling into this together with you was like a light at the end of the tunnel, something for me to finally understand what I should do.” The boy took another sip of his tea.

“But well, let's get to the point. What did you see about Lucien?”

Grace took the hint, he didn't want to bring it up and she was fine with that.

“That's basically what I told you, you know? Oliver showed it to me when he died.”

Viktor shook his head, processing how he was going to start telling her family story. “The story about Lucien is not pretty at all, I think almost everyone in the city knows what he did here, it's something that has been going on for decades and is mostly used by grandparents or those more rooted in the past as a warning about the dangers of getting carried away by dark magic.” He settled further into the chair, getting into a more comfortable position.

“Well, according to what I was told, Lucien was the brother of Ezden and Hyperion, all of this happened about 60 years ago, I believe, it's not that old, but it's still not that recent. What goes around is that Lucien was involved with dark magic, a branch of dark magic that is more aimed at those who have contact with the world of shadows, but it cannot be done by just anyone, the wizard or wizard needs to have permission from the shadows to be able to practice this branch of magic, have more than three mentors, and be supervised 24 hours a day. Do you understand the danger? Exactly. And according to what his grandmother told me, he only had books and the supervision of a person he never met in his life, she told me that in the beginning, her father-in-law's father who is her great-great-grandfather, Hyperion, told her that he was a good and kind person, but he fell into disgrace after that.” Viktor stopped for a moment, both to reorganize himself and so Grace could keep up. “Are you able to keep up?”

Grace nodded. Too interested in the story to be able to express herself verbally.

“Well, after that, he hired Oliver Aiken as a helper, but the poor boy didn't know that Lucien was working directly with Lázaro and that he would be used as a sacrifice to bring his ghost back to life. Lucien knew all this, he confessed in the face of the trials he had after he died.” Viktor stopped a little when he noticed the doubt that formed in Grace's expression with her last statement. He soon offered to explain. “That's how things work in our world, they don't judge you in life, they judge your soul after it passes into the shadow world.”

Grace shook her head. She could understand the logic in doing this, but not much further, perhaps she would have to ask Elisa a little more about this matter.

“At the time, you could say that everything was going well for everyone in the family, they were happy and despite finding his presence a little strange, Oliver began to visit the Valefar mansion almost daily on Lucien's behalf, and on these trips, he ended up getting closer to Ezden. Look, I have to tell you, from your grandmother and everyone I heard this story from, they say that Oliver was a pure soul, fooled by Lucien's charm, but I don't believe it.”

"Why?" Grace asked.

“Do you really think he didn’t know what Lucien was doing? Look, I don't think he was so blind that he didn't realize what he was up to. But well, I'm not anyone's judge and I wasn't there to say anything, just don't believe he's that sweetheart and I don't think he should be on that pedestal they put him on. Continuing, After a while, Ezden and Oliver began to have a hidden romance, more hidden from Lucien than from others in the family, his great-great-grandfather knew about them, that's why I think Oliver knew what he was doing and sympathized with his actions, he hid their relationship for a reason and he knew that Lucien wouldn't agree.”

“I’ll make some more tea.” Viktor got up, going to prepare his tea again, but continuing the story. “Bottom line to the whole situation, Lucien discovered they were having an affair and was angry with Oliver for betraying him and Lucien killed him, and I believe that's where his vision comes in. It was after this happened that his family began to decline, everyone was looking for Lucien who ran away after doing what he did. Ezden, who went into depression after seeing Oliver die and losing him, committed suicide after a few months, and the only one of his brothers left was his great-great-grandfather. The last thing they knew about Lucien was that he was dead and was being judged by the shadows.”

“What are these shadows?” Grace asked, still riled by the story that Viktor was telling her, that she didn't know that her family was so extensive and that there was so much history involved with it. The boy was now leaning against the counter, enjoying his cup of tea which Grace now knew was a different flavor from the smell.

‘You need to understand a lot more, dear. But come on.”