I was wrong.
Wrong is delicious.Wrong means there is still truth to excavate.
I press my fingertips to the photograph of her house, that rotting Victorian I can’t quite figure out.Does something else live inside of it, within the walls and the foundation?Something that loves her enough to tear reality open rather than let me have her?
Because the house didn’t just quake.It commanded.The very boards shrieked obedience.
She has a guardian.No, more than that.She has a servant.A powerful, loyal, utterly devoted thing that dwells in shadows and stones, and it answers to her.
I move to the wall where I have pinned my observations.Sera’s patterns, her routines.The men who orbit her like moons around a dark planet.I have been watching the surface, cataloging the performance.
But underneath…oh, underneath there is an entire kingdom I had not yet perceived.
The detective first.Eddie Crowe.I study his photograph, the official department headshot I pulled from public records.Sharp eyes with haunted depths.The kind of man who believes in justice but has learned it wears many faces.He circled her.Protected her.Used his badge as a shield for whatever sins she committed.
Not as much anymore, though.
I removed him.I planted evidence that even he could not dispute.I watched him crumble as his superiors stripped away his authority, his weapon, his legitimacy.He is castrated now, harmless, no longer useful to Sera.
One piece removed from the board.
I trace a red line through his photograph.Not crossed out, but completed and rendered into truth.He believed he served justice.Now he knows he served only her.That is a revelation for him.That is my gift to him.
But there are others.
The large Scotsman with scarred knuckles and an almost constant smile that lights up his killing eyes.I have seen him with blood under his fingernails and satisfaction in his stride.This one is her weapon.He does the wet work she requires.He is loyal the way a hound is loyal—feral, absolute, hungry for her approval.
I will need to study him further.
And the thing in the house… The guardian, the presence that threw open the door and shook the house with such violence that I still felt it in my bones half a block away.That stopped my heart.That sent me running like prey.
I do not run from prey.I run from predators.
She commands a predator, and this changes everything.
My thesis requires revision.She is not a woman hiding from her true self.She is a woman who has built herself from the ruins of whatever broke her and then surrounded herself with shadows and men willing to bleed for her.
She isn’t fleeing her past.She is weaponizing it.
What a beautiful thing she’s done.
She came to this town with purpose.The detective was not an accident but a selection—she chose a man with access to systems, to information, to legal protection.The Scotsman was chosen for his capacity for violence, his willingness to act without moral hesitation.And the thing in the house, she has bound it to her service.
She is building an army.
No.Not an army.A court.
And courts exist to wage war.
The question blooms in my mind, perfect and sharp:War against whom?
According to my research, Sera Vale is a new name.A chosen name.Beneath it lies someone else.Someone with history.Someone who suffered a defining trauma that cracked her open and let the darkness pour in.
Someone seeking revenge.
I have been hunting a victim.I should have been studying a general.
I need more information.I need to understand her kingdom fully before I can dismantle it properly.The detective was easy—his pride and his sense of justice made him vulnerable.But the others?They will require more careful attention.
