Elizabeth Hale rarely left the house. The academy was her only exception, and even there she slipped through its corridors like a ghost, silent and unremarkable by design. Social awkwardness wrapped around her like a second skin, one she had long since stopped trying to shed. She preferred the stillness of home, the training hall buried beneath it, and the familiar weight of her blankets.
The world beyond her doorstep was too loud, too crude, and far too dangerous. People died every day now. Death had become ordinary, one more statistic in the wake of the plague that had remade humanity, the Nightmare Spell.
The academy existed for a single purpose, to prepare teenagers for that Spell. It had descended on the world years before Elizabeth was born, a calamity so strange that, over time, people learned to live around it the way they did earthquakes or hurricanes.
Yet the Nightmare Spell did more than kill. It forced humanity to change. Men and women began to awaken with strength that shattered the limits of the human body, with abilities that defied reason They became the awakened, the only ones capable of facing the nightmare creatures birthed from the depths of the Spell.
Awakened saved lives, so the world worshiped them. News feeds, dramas, games, advertisements every medium revolved around their exploits. Admiration turned to fame, and fame turned to wealth, until awakened stood as the glittering icons of a brutal new age. Almost everyone dreamed of becoming one.
Her older brother had been one of the awakened.
Without his awakening, the Hales would have rotted in the city's cracks, another nameless family swallowed by the slums. His power dragged them up into comfort instead. Elizabeth was born into that ease, sheltered from the hunger and fear that had shaped her parents. To them, her brother was a golden ticket, not a son. Somewhere along the way, they stopped seeing the person beneath the power. He became revenue and reputation, a machine that turned monsters into money. They forgot that every mission meant wading through nightmare creature. They forgot he walked beside death each time he dealt with a Nightmare Gate.
He never complained. He bore the weight alone. Elizabeth had been too young to see how much he carried. She took his strength for granted the way children accept sunlight, believing it will always be there.
Then he rose to the rank of Master, and their lives grew softer still. When he announced that he had been chosen for his third Nightmare expedition, their parents threw a celebration. They talked of projected earnings, new investments, better schools, anything but the risk. It never occurred to them that their son might not come back.
Elizabeth remembered the last day she spoke to him with painful clarity.
They had just finished training. She was grinding through the last set of her drills when he mentioned it, almost casually. The wooden practice sword slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a dull crack.
"Why do you have to go?" she blurted. "You're already strong. Why do you need to become a Saint?"
He paused, genuinely taken aback, and then laughed. She could still hear that laugh, warm, bright, threaded with a sorrow her carefree mind hadn't recognized. "Are you worried about me?"
She nodded. She might have been young, but she knew the dangers he faced. He reached out and ruffled her hair, gentle as ever.
"Aw, that's sweet. But don't worry. I'll be A-OK. I just have to get strong enough to protect you and our family."
She huffed and crossed her arms. "I can protect myself. Just wait. When I awaken, I'll be more awesome than you ever were."
A faint melancholy curved his smile. "Honestly, I'd rather you stayed ordinary."
She scowled. "You always say that. You just want to keep all the attention for yourself, like you do with Mom and Dad."
He blinked, then smiled again, that radiant grin that seemed to light up the training hall. Awakened, especially Masters, always looked a little unreal, their presence almost too sharp for the world. Elizabeth had seen his colleagues. They were all striking. But none of them shone the way he did, not to her. His smile made it impossible to stay angry for long. She tried, sometimes, sulking until he teased it out of her with laughter.
"When I come back," he said, "I'll show you the memories I got from the big bad monsters and tell you all about my adventure. Deal?"
She nodded, pretending not to care. "Stop talking like that. I'm not a kid anymore. I just turned ten, remember?"
He lunged forward and tried to tickle her. She half-laughed, half-squirmed away.
"You'll always be a kid to me," he said.
For all her mock irritation, she loved him more than anyone. He had given her more time, more warmth, than their parents ever had. He was her world's center of gravity.
She had been afraid, but she believed he would return. He always had. He was unbreakable.
Months passed. She trained every day, Encouraged by the thought of his surprise when he saw how far she had come. Months bled into a year. The quiet panic she kept buried began to spread, thin and cold, through the spaces between her thoughts. Her parents, at last, started to show cracks of worry as well. Another year slipped away. Even then, she refused to accept what her heart already knew.
The truth arrived the day she came home from her first afternoon at the academy.
Strangers waited at the front door. Their clothes were sharp, perfectly cut, and their faces had that unnatural symmetry that marked the awakened. Grief sat heavily on them, making their beauty seem alien. Her mother sobbed into her hands. Her father stood hollow-eyed, as if someone had scooped him out.
They all turned toward Elizabeth.
No one had to say a word, yet that was enough for her to understand.
The awakened who had gone into the Nightmare with her brother stepped forward to speak. They told her of his sacrifice, of the moment he gave his life to shield them, of how he died a hero. She did not want their story, not from them nor did she want to hear the titles her brother got. She wanted to hear his voice, feel his hand ruffle her hair, complain about the monsters himself. But he was gone.
The last fragile piece of hope inside her shattered and her world caved in.
After that, she simply stopped going out. She retreated into the training hall beneath the house and stayed there. She did not seek friends at the academy. She did not answer invitations. Her parents, meanwhile, clung like drowning people to the influence her brother had left behind. They scrambled for positions, favors, and postings, desperate to maintain the life he had won for them. Eventually, they secured comfortable government jobs and vanished into their work. Whatever attention they had once spared her evaporated.
They became strangers she shared a roof with.
Elizabeth went numb. Days blurred into a loop: train, eat, sleep, repeat. She no longer remembered why she had started. Once, she had trained to surpass her brother. Without him, that goal meant nothing. Still, the rhythm soothed her. Moving kept the panic quiet. So she continued.
Years later, she stood alone in the dim training hall, a wooden practice blade resting against her palm. Her movements flowed with effortless precision, honed into instinct by endless repetition. Her breathing stayed slow and measured. Her jet-black hair was tied back into a tight ponytail that swayed with each shift of her stance. Her green eyes narrowed as she imagined an attack slashing in from her left. She stepped aside, weight light on the balls of her feet, then came to a halt.
Sweat beaded on her lean, toned frame, catching what little light filtered into the room. She let out a low breath, dropped her guard, and let her arms fall.
"I still can't beat you," she murmured.
In her mind, she had not been alone. She had been sparring with her brother's ghost.
She had once read about an old sport called boxing and a method they used—shadowboxing, fighting an imaginary opponent. She had stolen the idea and made it her own. Over the years, her brother's image had grown sharper and sharper until the boundary between imagination and reality blurred. There were days when she had to remind herself that he was not truly there.
She suspected it said something about her mental health, but she did not care.
"Aw, don't look so glum," her imagined brother said, lightly flicking her cheek. "You've improved a lot. I'm pretty sure you're stronger than most normal people now. Anyway, since I won again, don't forget to water the plants at my grave."
Her brows pulled together. She had gotten too good at this. Even his annoying habits had followed her into the hallucination.
He had shared almost every feature she had, the same sharp green eyes, the same lean athletic build, only broader through the shoulders. His jawline had been more angular, his presence heavier. The real difference between them had always been their hair. Where Elizabeth tied hers back neatly, his had been a wild mess of black strands, shooting off in every direction as if he'd just rolled out of bed and never bothered to fix it.
"It's not that I don't want to," she said quietly, "but a Nightmare Gate opened near the cemetery a few days ago. The place is a disaster. I'm not even sure your grave is still standing."
The phantom chuckled. "Then make me a new one in the garden."
She rolled her eyes and lifted her sword again. "I don't want to. Anyway, that was just a warm-up. Get ready."
A knock sounded before she could move. Elizabeth lowered her blade and turned toward the entrance.
A girl lounged against the wall, watching her. She had long, wavy blond hair and bright blue eyes, and a worn leather jacket that did little to hide the lines of her figure or the pale glow of her skin. The air seemed to brighten around her, as if she'd dragged sunlight in with her. She looked like a princess who had stepped out of one of the fairy tales book Elizabeth used to devour as a child.
"Still talking to yourself, I see," the girl said. "You know you should probably see a therapist about that."
Elizabeth's lips twitched. "I'm perfectly fine. A little imagination never hurt anyone, Saint Tessie."
Tessie's mouth curved into a playful smile. "Oh, darling, if only you knew. And I told you, drop the 'Saint.' Just Tessie."
"Sure, Saint Tessie. I'll keep that in mind." Elizabeth rolled her eyes and tilted her head. "Also, I'm fairly certain I locked that door. How did you get in?"
Tessie smirked. "Bold of you to assume a lock can stop a Saint."
Elizabeth sighed. "Common courtesy still exists, you know. Instead of breaking in and loitering, you could help me train. That would at least be useful."
Tessie's chuckle echoed off the stone as she pushed off the wall, grabbed a spare wooden sword, and walked toward her.
Most people would have called Elizabeth's tone disrespectful. Saints were revered, after all; they were the legends among the awakened. But Tessie was the closest thing Elizabeth had to a friend. She had been one of her brother's teammates, one of the survivors of the third Nightmare. At first, she had visited out of obligation, checking on the little sister of the man who had died for her. Over time, those visits became something else. Tessie carved time out of an impossible schedule to stop by, again and again, until a bond formed between them.
Later, Elizabeth learned the truth: Tessie hadn't just respected her brother. She had loved him. During that Nightmare, they had been something close to lovers, talking in quiet moments about the future they would build when they returned. About Marriage, A home, a life beyond Nightmare Gates and monsters.
A future that never arrived.
At first, that knowledge had hurt. Elizabeth had thought Tessie came only out of the guilt she felt. Tessie admitted that had been true at the beginning. But somewhere along the way, guilt had turned into something gentler. She had begun to see Elizabeth as a little sister. The two of them wrestled their way through grief together and came out the other side with something that looked like family.
Elizabeth knew that without Tessie, her mind might have shattered completely.
She steadied her breathing and let her focus narrow. the thoughts about the past—all of it fell away. There was only the woman in front of her, sword in hand.
Tessie stood in a loose, almost lazy stance, riddled with openings that screamed to be exploited. Elizabeth's jaw tightened. She remembered their first spar far too well. She remembered lunging for one of those openings and paying for it. Those gaps were traps, every single one of them.
Finding nothing truly exposed, Elizabeth exhaled and chose the least suicidal opening. At least she knew she was stepping into danger. She launched forward and brought her blade down in a sharp arc.
Tessie smiled, slipped past the blow with a twist of her hips, and drove her wooden sword toward Elizabeth's ribs. Elizabeth had been waiting for that. She broke her swing halfway and snapped her blade sideways, deflecting the strike with a speed most people would have called inhuman.
Their swords clacked together.
Elizabeth used her free hand to dart a punch toward Tessie's throat. Tessie slid back, letting the blow pass. A wooden dagger appeared in Elizabeth's palm as if from nowhere, and she slashed for Tessie's face. Tessie leaned out of range, moving with the ease of someone who had already seen the attack play out a dozen times.
The brief opening closed. Elizabeth yielded ground and jumped back.
Tessie's grin widened. "Still practicing those hand tricks, I see. I have to admit, they're useful. I thought you were wasting your time with them, but I was wrong."
Elizabeth did not bother replying. She drove forward again.
They traded blows until her muscles burned and her lungs scraped for air. At last, Elizabeth's legs gave out and she sank to the floor, sweat cooling against her skin.
Tessie lowered her sword and watched her with a soft, almost proud smile. "Not bad. For a mundane, you're right at the edge of human limits. Your swordplay is sharpening up nicely. I still say you should focus on the spear like me, but overall? Your progress is astonishing. Really. You could have wiped the floor with me back when I was still mundane."
Elizabeth met her gaze, chest still heaving, and managed a quiet, "Thank you."
"Well," Tessie continued, "you're almost seventeen and still no sign of the Nightmare Spell. Depending on your perspective, that makes you either very lucky or very unlucky."
Elizabeth said nothing.
On paper, it was a blessing. Most people prayed never to fall asleep and wake inside a Nightmare. Elizabeth could not see it that way. Nightmare Gates were multiplying. Entire regions had fallen to them. To remain mundane in such a world felt less like safety and more like a sentence. A Gate could open in your front yard, and there would be nothing you could do but run and hope the awakened came in time.
For the powerless, the odds of dying were brutally high. Elizabeth did not want to stay ordinary. She knew awakenings after seventeen or eighteen were rare. The thought of her not awakening had gnawed at her for months.
Until last night.
"Tessie," she said, her voice suddenly thin, "about that… I think the Nightmare Spell has finally infected me. Last night, I was sure that if I fell asleep, I'd be dragged into my first Nightmare."
Tessie's smile froze. Her eyes widened, shock cutting through her usual composure.
"YOU ARE WHAT?"