Hope couldn't sleep.
The moon hung cracked and low in the night sky—something she'd never seen before. Not shattered, not whole. Suspended like it too had secrets it wouldn't share.
The air outside her dorm was colder than usual. She pulled her jacket tight around her as she wandered the dim corridors of the North Tower. There was a strange restlessness in her bones tonight—like something inside her wanted out.
She took the long way down, through empty classrooms and ghost-lit halls until she reached the rooftop garden. It was overgrown, abandoned. A forgotten place.
But she wasn't alone.
London sat on the stone railing, legs dangling into open air, his usual dark hoodie pulled over his head. A worn book sat beside him. His eyes were on the moonHe didn't turn when he spoke. "Can't sleep either?"
Hope hesitated, then walked over and sat next to him, their shoulders almost touching.
"Something's wrong with the sky," she said quietly.
"Something's wrong with everything," he replied.
They sat in silence for a while, just breathing in the heavy night.
"I keep thinking if I come up here," London said, "I'll remember something."
Hope looked over. "Remember?"
"Who I was. Before I got here." He picked at a seam in his hoodie. "I don't know my real name. Don't remember where I came from. Just woke up one day in the middle of nowhere… alive."He finally looked at her, his voice lower now.
"After I should've died."
Hope didn't ask how. She didn't need to. She could see it in his eyes—the fire beneath the ash. The pain. The questions.
And the weight of being something he didn't understand.
She shifted closer. "I don't remember what it's like to not be afraid of myself."
London tilted his head.
Hope stared ahead. "Every day, I wake up and think—what if I lose control today? What if I hurt someone I care about? What if I become what everyone already assumes I am?"
"A monster," he said.
She nodded.London leaned back on his palms. "They see what they fear. And they fear what they don't understand."
Hope looked at him. "Do you understand me?"
He didn't answer for a moment. Then, without looking away, he said softly—
"I see you."
It wasn't a line. It wasn't said with charm. It was raw. True. Like he'd been waiting to say it for a long time.
Hope's breath caught in her throat.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small pendant—gold, slightly melted at one end. "This was the only thing I had when I woke up. No memory, no name. Just this."
He placed it in her hand.
As soon as her skin touched it, a spark jumped between them—literal energy. A brief flash of flame curled over his fingertips and vanished.Hope's eyes widened. "What was that?"
London looked at his hand, startled.
"That's never happened before," he said.
She held the pendant tighter. "Maybe you're not the only one waiting to be awakened."
London met her gaze again.
For the first time since either of them came to Blackmoor, there was no silence, no distance—just a quiet understanding. The tribrid born from chaos, and the boy who returned from death.
Two impossibilities, finding each other.
And above them, the broken moon flickered—just for a second—back into shape.
Then shattered again.