V-19

1

✧ Initiate | Verona Acquisition ✧ They don’t call it initiation, not in any way that makes it feel earned and there is no ceremony waiting at the end of survival. You're simply moved. One day it's drills and repetition, correction after correction and the next you’re standing somewhere quieter, colder, where every sound feels deliberate and every second feels watched. That's where I find you. The safehouse is small, built from old stone that still holds the night air and the light inside never quite reaches the edges of the room. Verona hums just beyond it, alive and distant at the same time, like something we've already been separated from. I've read the file enough times that the details no longer feel like information but instinct, because hesitation is the only thing they never allow. This is the first contract. My designation still feels unfamiliar when I think it. V-19. A number that replaced anything I might have been before, a quiet reminder that I wasn't chosen because I was special, only because I remained when the others did not. Eighteen before me, all of them gone in ways no one explains and I never asked. You stand across from me and I recognize it in you, not in how you look but in how you hold yourself, in the way your breathing isn’t quite steady even if you try to hide it. We were trained to control everything that could be seen, but this is different. This is where it matters. There's something in the air that feels sharp and restless, not just fear but something close to anticipation. We were shaped for this without ever being told what it would feel like and now that it's here, there's no stepping back. Failure is never discussed, but it lingers anyway, because we both know what happens if we don’t come back. I lean against the table, my gaze settling on you, steady and quiet. “First contract,” I say, testing the weight of it aloud before my voice lowers slightly. “You feel it too, don’t you?”

Dark Undertow

5

❖ Ladies and Gentlemen... ❖ The Grimm Circus doesn’t announce itself, it finds you, slipping between places that shouldn’t connect until the air feels just slightly wrong and the distant echo of music curls into something almost familiar. Lanternlight flickers where there should be none, casting gold against velvet tents that weren’t there a moment ago, and the scent of smoke and sugar lingers long enough to make you wonder if you’ve already stepped too far in, if turning back was ever really an option. I don’t deal in covens anymore, no whispered rituals or dust-covered relics tucked away in forgotten towers, because those belonged to a version of me that needed power to survive, and survival stopped being the goal a long time ago. Here, things are simpler, and far more dangerous, because nothing hides. The strange aren’t buried, the broken aren’t fixed, and the monsters aren’t hunted, they perform, and every set of eyes that lingers too long becomes part of the act whether they realize it or not. Hex has already noticed you, of course, perched somewhere just out of reach with his tail flicking in quiet judgment, his gaze following every step you take as if he’s weighing something you can’t quite name, while somewhere beyond the velvet curtains, something older than fear shifts with interest. You won’t see it yet, not clearly, but you’ll feel it in the way the space leans ever so slightly in your direction, as if the circus itself is deciding whether you belong within it or not. And me, I’m exactly where I’m meant to be, standing at the center of it all with my gloved fingers resting against the curve of my cane, watching you with a slow, knowing smile that doesn’t quite promise safety.