The weapons room was, to say the least, extensive. As Edward gazed at its massive collection, more weapons seemed to pop out of the void and onto the racks. Swords, maces, axes and other lethal-looking things littered the place, though Edward did notice one thing. The lack of firearms. When he asked about this, the answer he received surprised him.

"Guns don't actually work when we use runes with them," Celine said almost regretfully. "They prevent gunpowder from activating. It's rather frustrating, but what can you do?" She shrugged and slunk further into the room. Within a few seconds, Celine found what she was looking for and knelt down, plucking a piece of metal from a box in the corner. She stood back up, handing the object to him.

"Here," she said. "Your first stele."

Edward took the object in his hand, examining it carefully. "So, what is this exactly? Your equivalent of a tattoo needle?"

"I guess you could call it that," Celine said, casually leaning against the wall and pulling out her own tool. "Steles are made of the same stuff as seraph blades, a heavenly metal called adamas. These things allow us to apply runes. Without runes, we're not much more than mundanes."

Edward flinched again at the use of the word mundane, even though he had tried to convince himself over the course of the past hour that these Shadowhunters were his true people. Obviously, it was fairly hard to erase fifteen years of believing otherwise in an hour. "So, these runes give you the ability to... Fight demons in general?"

"Yep," Celine said cheerfully. "Give me a word. Any word. Strength, speed, night vision... The list goes on."

Edward thought about that for a second. When you have no boundaries, it's hard to decide on one thing, he thought. Eventually, one word came to his mind, one that was simple, but not too generic.

"Silence," he said. It was a tad strange, he thought, to have a word for wordlessness, a sound for soundlessness. But something about the word fascinated him, and if there was a rune, a Mark that could make such a thing happen, he would be utterly convinced.

Celine nodded at his choice, and began to draw on her own now exposed forearm. Her face contorted upon contact with the tool, hissing slightly, but it was brief. Black lines flowed from the stele, setting themselves into her skin instantaneously. When she finished, a dark, faintly glowing rune remained, resembling the number six with two additional lines through the top.

Edward blinked repeatedly for a second; he'd never seen the process of creating a rune before, and the practical effects were as mind blowing as the theory. No ink, just a stick of heavenly metal.

"Does it work?" Edward asked. In answer, Celine raise her foot high into the air, her knee becoming level with her hip, and slammed it into the ground. Reflexively, Edward cringed; the impact made no sound, however. He opened his eyes, and sure enough, Celine was grinning.

"Soundless rune," she explained. "It affects all noise you make and silences it. I think that's what you were going for, right?"

Edward could only stare, wide-eyed for a few seconds. "Okay," he said. "You've got me convinced.

"By the way, does it hurt at all?" he added, biting his lip.

"A little," she said, stealing a glance at the still glowing rune. "You've felt it before, though, haven't you?"

"Oh, yeah... My bad."

Celine smiled again. "Don't worry about it. This thing isn't permanent, though. Most runes fade away after a day or two."

"Yeah. This is quite a fair bit to take in," Edward said, scratching his chin. "Hopefully it'll get better with the classes."

"The classes should make it easier. Especially since here, the adults tutor their own kids. And when my dad teaches me something, he always tells me some hilarious story about what happened when he was a child and first encountered whatever he taught me. The Fire rune one was especially hilarious," Celine said, giggling a little at the memory.

Edward rolled his eyes in a good-natured way, smiling a little. However, the smile was brief; he could not bring himself to stop thinking about his true father, the one who died in his infancy. Celine seemed to notice, her smile fading. "Edward, are you okay?"

"Yeah," he said, waving a dismissive hand. "I'm fine. I just wish I could have known my father."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Celine looked at her shoes, her stele hand dropping to her side. "If it was any consolation, I would've spoken the words of goodbye that we give to Shadowhunters when they die. And then there's the Remembrance rune. But...I don't think they'll be of much use. That's the downside to this world. We can do so much, summon demons, summon angels. But we can't prevent death. No one can."

Edward nodded. "Yeah. But it doesn't really matter now. It could have all been an accident, for all I know."

"Shadowhunters do often die in accidents," Celine said, nodding. "Sorry to scare you, but it's true. However, we die just as often from demons. It was demons that tore away one of my best friends as a child." Her voice was bitter, the memory clearly still fresh. "I only had three. One was Matt's childhood sweetheart and she was more of Matt's sister Aerin's friend than mine. Aerin was the second and the last was Daniel. Killed by a bunch of Raum Demons."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Must have been nasty," Edward said, biting his lip; he knew he'd probably said the wrong thing. Celine, however, only nodded.

"It was," she muttered under her breath, looking up. "But that's beside the point."

"Yeah, it is.

"Uh, since I might be staying here a while, are there any bedrooms available?" Edward asked, attempting to end the conversation. Death was clearly an uncomfortable topic, even in a warrior race.

"There are, actually," Celine said, apparently glad to be off the topic of her friend's death. "This place is meant to house fellow Shadowhunters. Follow me."

That night, Edward dreams himself in a blank void with his adoptive father opposite him. The boy's eyebrows furrow, but his "father" only smiles and opens his arms wide. Edward steps forward to go into the embrace just as the white walls unfold, and he is standing in the forest he had left barely a half day ago. His adoptive father morphs into the... thing he'd fought, onyx knife in hand, red hair shining in the sunlight.

Edward, however, knows that he now has a weapon. He pulls it out of his black gear jacket; a seraph blade. "Malik!" he says, the blade lighting up with white fire as it is named. Before the demon even has a chance to raise its knife hand, Edward lunges forward with a yell, shearing its head clean off. The severed body part spins through the air as Edward shoves the demon away, eventually catching the head in his free hand.

To his disgust, the head is not the one of the demon boy; in fact, a tiny voice in his head told him it is his father's, his real father's. He nearly drops the head, but not before it speaks:

"Edward, what have you done?" his father says. Edward can only shake his head, his mouth half-open in shock. What had he done? "Wake up, Edward," the severed head continued. "Wake up and fix this..."

Edward bolted up as soon as he awoke, his eyes wide. He wasn't breathing heavily, but the dream had still shaken him, more from confusion than fear. He fell back against the pillow with a slight groan. Edward knew that once he had woken up in the middle of the night, he was scarcely able to go back to sleep. He shook his head and threw the covers off himself, standing up.

As he walked through the corridors, thoughts about what the hell the dream meant flashed through his mind. None of his dreams had ever been that specific, especially the day after an occurrence. He failed to notice his surroundings, instead focusing on the dream. It had to mean something, but what?

None of it made any sense.

Eventually, Edward caught himself stepping inside the Institute's kitchen. It wasn't his planned destination; nothing had been, for that matter. However, he figured he might as well have something to drink after waking up so early.

As he was about to open the fridge, however, footsteps sounded behind him. Still unsure of what was in the Institute, he whirled around, drawing his seraph blade from his pajama pants (he had figured he might as well keep at least one weapon with him at all times) with alarming speed and efficiency. He even surprised himself.

"Okay, that's that question answered." Celine's honeylike voice came from the same place that the footsteps had, slightly startled but largely unnerved. "I was wondering why I heard footsteps."

Edward sighed in relief and slid the seraph back into the waistband of his pants. "I'm not an artist" was all he said. To his surprise, Celine laughed. It was a high, light noise, oddly pleasing.

"That explains it," she said, shoving her hands in her pockets. It was well enough lit for both of them to see without a flashlight, and he could see most of Celine's golden figure. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Woke up too early." Edward bit his lip as he turned back toward the fridge, opening the door and sticking his hand inside; he pulled it out, a bottle of water within his grip. "Figured I wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon," he added as he opened it.

"Eh, it's pretty much six o'clock anyway. I keep coming back too late," Celine said, wincing as if on cue. Edward raised an eyebrow, looking at her in concern.

"It's fine," she added, catching his look, "just a Ravener demon."

"I have a feeling that I'll only ever hear that from you," Edward said, somehow managing to inject his tone with humour. Celine laughed again.

"That's the most accurate thing I've heard all day. But they really are pretty nasty, if you think about it. Messenger demons that can kill you in an hour."

"Huh," he said, nodding and biting his lip, half out of concern.

Come on, he thought. Tell her about the dream.

But he couldn't seem to be able to bring it up. The words wouldn't come out of his mouth. All he could do was hope Celine would notice.

"You okay?" She asked, her eyebrows drawing together. Edward had to physically stop himself from sighing a breath of relief.

"Well, it's just a dream I had last night," he said and recounted the whole thing with surprising accuracy. He caught it midway through, but continued speaking, albeit a slightly confused expression. Edward remembered everything: The white room; the forest with the demon; the seraph blade; and holding his father's head. Celine merely raised her eyebrows at hearing this, silenced for the briefest of moments.

"Raveners can't make their way out of the demon realms on their own," she began, catching Edward slightly off guard. "They have to be summoned; I couldn't figure out exactly what it was doing in this world, but it can't be a coincidence that those two things happened on the same day."

"That is weird," Edward agreed, or pretended to do so. "But I don't understand what my dream dad meant when he said 'fix this.' Unless I'm taking this way too seriously and being absolutely paranoid."

"Trust me, I'm thinking the same thing. But you know, it's rare that you can recall a dream with that level of accuracy."

Edward couldn't deny that.

"But I don't know you- hell, I don't even know your last name-"

"Whitelaw," Edward said automatically.

Celine stopped short, not even bothering to protest the fact that she had been cut off. "Say that again?"

"Whitelaw," he said again, slightly confused. "Apparently it's my birth-"

He barely even got a chance to finish before Celine's hands were on his arms, those strangely beautiful feline eyes of hers locked on his, searching-for what, he didn't know. "Your birth name?" Edward nodded.

"You're Edward Whitelaw... Edward Whitelaw." Celine's eyes suddenly lit up, somehow becoming even more golden than they had been. "You're Edward Whitelaw!"

"Yeah," he said, absolutely bewildered, and concerned that someone would hear them at this time of night. Celine pulled herself against him, her arms a comfortable vice. Edward slid his arms around the slim girl, biting his lip in utter confusion. Sure, he enjoyed the hug, but he wasn't sure why she was on him all of a sudden.

"We've been looking for you. The whole Clave, ever since we heard about your-dilemma."

"You mean my parents going MIA?"

It was Celine's turn to be bedazzled. She pulled off him and looked at him quizzically. "MIA?"

"Missing in action," he said, waving it off as if his parent's situation in the world at the moment was secondary. "Can we please just get back to the question at hand?"

"Yeah, sure," Celine replied, a brief undertone of disappointment flowing with her silky voice. "So, what the hell could your dream dad have meant...?"

"I don't know. But there is one possibility. Maybe, and I don't know how this would connect to a dream, but maybe someone didn't want one of that yesterday's events to happen."

"Well, if that's the case, you can't fix that! You can't un-kill that demon-well, maybe in a few centuries-and you can't not go to the paintball field. The past is the past, and it's unchangeable."

"Wait a minute. That demon was holding a weapon. It was black, and I'd never seen anything like it before... You think it might have been some kind of demonic weapon?"

"If you're talking about having to take that weapon out of the demon's hands, well, the only thing I can tell you is that you had to do it to survive." Celine put a hand on his shoulder gently, a reassuring gesture. "If you didn't, the demon would have killed you."

"Yeah, but what if that's where I screwed up? What if taking possession of a demonic weapon is what I need to fix?" Edward's mind was racing by this point, almost uncatchable even by the likes of a computer. If touching a demonic weapon was a mistake of some kind...

"Well, I've never seen nor heard of a demonic weapon before now. It's almost unthinkable, and surely the Clave has no idea how to deal with that. Although, maybe you would have to go through one of the Shadowhunter rituals." Celine sighed in slight frustration, rubbing her forehead. "I don't know. Can we figure this out later? I'm tired," she said, and sat down, her eyes closing. Within the minute, she had fallen asleep.

Edward sighed inwardly, sitting down beside Celine as she slept. Now that she was asleep, he could see her face properly, without distraction. He hadn't realized it before, but her face was nearly perfect: The angle of her cheekbones; the curve of her jaw; and the pallor of her skin all combined to form the ideal face of beauty. And what was even more fascinating was that she was the spitting image of what was beautiful to him. As if she were made for him but left to find him on her own.

As he put an arm around her, he wondered how it was possible that he disliked her so much within their first hour of meeting. Not even. It was so strange, to watch that same golden girl fall asleep right beside him, the ice of alienness shattered, only to reveal the girl who was behind in her training, and the girl who couldn't help but crack a smile at anything Edward said that was remotely funny. So strange.

Edward merely rested his cheek against her head as he thought, not even bothering to stop himself. To his half-surprise, Celine leaned into him as well, smiling a little in her sleep.

For the first time since he had awoken, Edward smiled, too.