Mallory woke to the sound of the door closing. She didn't sit up. Didn't open her eyes. Just listened, her senses half-lulled by the warmth of sleep. The soft click of the latch told her Crowley was gone. Gone early, and without ceremony. No clatter of boots, no muttered sarcasm. Just a quiet departure like he'd never been there at all.
It didn't surprise her. She shifted beneath the blanket, one arm tucked under her cheek, the other curled close to her chest. The flat was still dim, still shadowed in grey. The light through the curtains hadn't shifted much since she first fell asleep.
Her eyes drifted closed again.
The world she entered wasn't a dream in the usual sense. It felt too specific, too textured. She could smell the candle smoke, the dry earth, the iron tang of dust and age.
She stood once more in the monastery. But it was whole now - new, almost. Stone clean and uncracked. Wooden pews unmarred. Tapestries intact, their threads shining gold under flickering sconces.
And the silence… it wasn't empty. It was waiting.
She moved slowly through the central nave, the soles of her boots soundless against polished flagstone. In the chapel, the mural had returned. Not as a faded ruin, but in full glory. The robed figure stood tall, quill poised above a page of impossible radiance. His face no longer scratched out, but serene. Worshipful.
And beside him stood the woman - alive, breathing, watching.
Not paint, but real.
Her robes were tattered, scorched in places, but her posture was regal. Her hands, wrapped in linen that smoldered at the edges, held a single page. And her eyes… those strange silvered eyes… met Mallory's without blinking.
Mallory stepped closer. The woman said nothing. Only extended the page toward her. Mallory reached out slowly, her hand hovering in the space between them.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
Still, silence.
Mallory looked at the page. It wasn't blank. The glyphs shimmered faintly, but they weren't familiar letters. They were something deeper, older. Symbols she had no business understanding. And yet she did.
They meant something, even though she couldn't translate them. Like music heard in another room. Felt, not heard.
"What are you?" she asked, her voice thin in the echoing chapel.
The woman tilted her head slightly, then moved one burned hand to press it against her own chest.
Mallory mirrored the motion instinctively.
You are the last seal, the voice said.
But not aloud. Not even in her mind. It was as though the words existed in her bones.
Mallory's hand brushed the parchment - and the world collapsed inward.
She jolted upright in bed.
The room was cold. Light had shifted to that dull, indifferent grey of late morning. Her blanket had fallen to the floor. Her skin was clammy with sweat.
Something was on the nightstand.
She hadn't noticed it before. A page - plain vellum, edges torn. Her breath caught.
She hadn't opened the Codex. Hadn't gone near it.
Her rational brain told her it had been a dream. But the page told her otherwise. She reached out, cautiously. The page was blank, at first. Then, as her fingers touched it, the ink bled in.
Spidery black letters that curved and spiraled, forming symbols she couldn't have reproduced if she tried. Her vision blurred slightly as she looked at them, but her heart felt steady because somehow, somewhere deep beneath the fear, she understood.
Not the words themselves or their meaning, but their intent. It felt like being chosen. Claimed, as opposed to cursed. But she wasn't sure which would be worse.