Chapter 10: The Unraveling Thread

"Let's pull that thread, then.

 And see how much Aesira unravels."

The hardest part isn't the guilt.

It's the pull.

The way your mind bends around the possibility of becoming something again.

Something terrible.

Something... free.

I stopped sleeping.

Too many dreams. Or memories. Or maybe they're the same now.

Every crime scene I walk into, I half expect Lucian to be standing there, smiling, a fresh bouquet in hand.

He's always one step ahead.

But now?

Now he's leaving messages.

The first came on the third case of the week—a professor found strangled in his home, body placed in an antique rocking chair, eyes closed as though he were simply sleeping.

An open book in his lap.

A sprig of nightshade tucked between the pages.

A calling card.

But the note left behind was what made my breath catch.

"You taught me about silence. It lingers longer than screams."

He was quoting me.

From a case file that was never released to the public.

Which meant someone had breached the system.

Or...

Lucian had someone on the inside.

Or maybe... he didn't need anyone.

Maybe he had me.

I started reviewing every old file from my own past.

Victims.

Patterns.

Mistakes I thought I'd buried beneath time and paperwork.

But the deeper I dug, the more I saw it—

Lucian hadn't just recreated them.

He'd perfected them.

Tightened the details. Cleaned the compositions. Added flourishes I'd never dared to.

The mother and daughter with the marigolds? He'd added broken music boxes playing a discordant lullaby.

The professor? He'd painted ivy up the walls of the study, creeping toward the ceiling like time trying to escape.

It was performance art.

And I was his inspiration.

I brought it up to Captain Renley once.

Told him the murders had… an artistic thread.

He gave me that look. The one that said You've been at this too long, Vale. Go home. Sleep.

But I didn't sleep.

Instead, I drove.

Back to the villa.

He met me outside this time.

No mirror. No painting. No candles.

Just Lucian. In the dark. Leaning against the stone archway like he'd been waiting for years.

"I liked the professor," he said as I stepped out of the car. "So still. So ready."

"You're escalating," I said. "Leaving notes. You're getting sloppy."

He chuckled. "No, darling. I'm getting personal."

Inside, he led me to a small locked drawer.

Inside it: photographs.

All of me.

Not recent. Not even taken with modern lenses.

Old.

From years ago.

From before I joined the force.

One of me walking alone down the pier. Another, blurry, taken through a rain-soaked window as I sat in a diner booth.

One of me burying something in the woods.

That one made my hands go cold.

"I've always admired your form," he said quietly. "Even back then. You didn't panic. You didn't rush. You buried him like you were tucking in a child."

I couldn't speak.

The silence between us was suffocating.

Then he whispered:

"I could help you remember. If you want."

I left the villa at dawn, eyes bloodshot, mind fractured.

He was pulling at threads I thought were long gone.

But the worst part?

Some part of me wanted to remember.

To see it all again.

To understand how the first flower bloomed.

That week, he left three more notes.

Each one quoting my own hidden past.

Each one folded in the shape of a different flower.

He was speaking a language only we knew.

And I was starting to answer.