The castle had changed in the last few days. It wasn’t just quieter, it was suffocating. The usual hum of servants carrying trays or the faint clatter of dishes in far-off halls had vanished. No more hurried footsteps brushing past, no murmur of idle gossip drifting from behind doors. Even the air felt different, thicker, like the walls had swallowed every sound whole and were leaning closer with the weight of the silence.

  I noticed it first at breakfast, when I didn’t catch a glimpse of any servants peaking out from the kitchen as we passed by. Then again at midday, when the halls stayed empty. By evening, I couldn’t ignore it; the castle was too still.

  That was when Thorne told me. His voice was casual, like it didn’t matter, but the words landed sharp all the same.

  “No one comes in, no one leaves. Not until we say otherwise.”

  A lockdown.

  He didn’t explain why, and I doubted pressing him would get me anywhere. Whatever threat existed beyond these walls, they were treating it seriously enough to cut themselves off completely. And me, by extension.

  Yet the new rules weren’t what I expected. Instead of confining me more tightly, they loosened the leash, slightly. I was no longer restricted to my bedroom like a prisoner on watch. I was allowed, encouraged, even, to move through the castle’s interior. Not the outside grounds, of course. The heavy gates, the forest, the world beyond… those were forbidden unless I bore a mark from one of them. The words had been made clear, sharpened with an edge I didn’t miss: unmarked, you don’t leave.

  It felt like a trade. They had stripped away the distraction of outsiders, dismissed the servants, sealed every door that led outward, and in exchange, they offered me the hollow prize of exploration. Here, little human, roam the cage.

  And I took it. Because I had to. Sitting still, waiting, being compliant, that wasn’t survival, it was suffocation. If they thought letting me walk the halls was a mercy, they’d underestimated what I could do with it.

  Even so, the castle no longer felt like a fortress. It felt… unsettled. The vastness of the corridors didn’t comfort me; they echoed, empty of life. Doors I had only glimpsed before seemed to watch as I passed, their brass handles gleaming like unblinking eyes. Sometimes I thought I felt a presence where there should have been none, a flicker at the edge of my vision, a shadow shifting when no one was there. Maybe it was only my nerves. Or maybe the castle itself was restless under the weight of secrets.

  I told myself I wasn’t afraid, just cautious. But the truth was, I could feel it in my bones: things were changing. The rules, the silences, the way the men moved with tighter jaws and shorter tempers, it was all leading somewhere.

  So I wandered, alert, measuring every detail I hadn’t been able to before. I started in the kitchen. The smell of bread and roasting meat lingered faintly, as if the castle itself remembered old meals. Pots and pans hung in orderly rows; shelves groaned under the weight of preserves and jars I didn’t recognize. I peeked into the larder, tasting a dried fruit that made me grimace. Bagel padded silently behind me, sniffing at everything, tail high. I could almost forget the danger, almost forget what I had learned and what I was now: an anomaly in a world that had lost its balance.

  After the kitchen, I moved through corridors lined with storage rooms. Dusty crates, broken furniture, tools I couldn’t even begin to name, every corner seemed to hold secrets, though most of them weren’t particularly glamorous. I rifled through cabinets and drawers like a nosy raccoon, finding things like chipped goblets, mismatched candlesticks, and, at one point, an old pair of men’s underwear so enormous it could’ve doubled as a laundry bag. I held them up for exactly three seconds before deciding some mysteries were better left unsolved.

  There were old letters tied with ribbon too, brittle with age, but I barely had the patience to read past the faded “dearest.” Some of the storage rooms were locked, which of course only made me want to break into them more. But I kept moving, my curiosity tugging me forward.

  Eventually, I found the library. The doors were heavy, carved with intricate designs, the kind that spoke of wealth and knowledge hoarded for generations. Inside, the smell of old paper and leather was overwhelming. Floor-to-ceiling shelves loomed above, stacked with dusty tomes and scrolls. The quiet was almost sacred, the kind of silence that demanded respect.

  I wandered between the stacks, fingers brushing over spines worn smooth by time. Most of the titles were faded or in languages I didn’t recognize, but one thick, leather-bound volume with gilded edges tugged at my attention. It looked heavier than the weight of Grabber’s ego, but I slid it free and carried it to a nearby chair. The pages smelled of dust and ink, whispering of long-kept secrets. Only after flipping it open did I realize what I’d found: a history, not just of them, but of us, and the uneasy world the two had once tried to share.

  The first pages were dense and meticulous, and it became clear quite quickly that it wasn’t about human history at all - it was theirs. The supernaturals wrote of humanity only as background noise, nameless kings and fragile kingdoms that rose and fell while the true world pulsed beneath. They had lived in the shadows, watching, waiting, apart but ever-present.

  My fingers tightened on the page as I turned to the section marked with a thin, fraying ribbon. Whoever had used this book before had come back to this part more than once. My gaze darted across the words, and the pieces began to slot together. The mate epidemic.

  A virus, it said, had swept like wildfire through the supernatural population centuries ago, its origins unclear, its cruelty unmatched. It did not strike the youngest or the eldest among them, but their women. Always their women, and specifically, it fatally struck the marked ones. Every female who had been claimed, bound to a mate through the ancient rites, fell sick within months. The first signs were subtle: fatigue, fevers, a strange fading of the glow that marked their bond. But then the decline quickened. Some wasted away in weeks, others lingered for a year or two, but the end was always the same.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The chronicler’s words were detached, clinical even, but the horror bled through. Entire bloodlines ended in less than a decade. Entire clans lost every mother, every sister, every daughter. “An extinction by thread,” one margin note called it. The male survivors, immortal or long-lived, were left with hollow halls and empty hearths.

  Desperation bred invention. The records described endless attempts to halt the spread: bloodlettings by the vampires, potions brewed from rare beasts by the warlocks, spells created by the fae that promised purification but only hastened the decline. Healers tried to force unmating through agony and pain, only to watch the the men die alongside their mates. Even alchemists attempted to replicate life itself, crafting fragile vessels in which to house the souls of the dying, with each one failing, collapsing to ash. Groups started hunting each other, hoping that other species would be stronger against the mating epidemic, with succubi hunting werewolves, dragons hunting witches, and fae hunting vampires. With every failure, hope eroded, replaced by madness.

  Those who survived were anomalies, statistical errors in the disease’s hunger. The book treated them with fascination, dissecting their every recorded detail: what species they were, who they were bonded to, what rituals had been performed around them. But the pages made it clear, their survival was never permanent. Even the rare exceptions died eventually, claimed in the same cruel pattern, as if the bond itself carried a timer that no healer, no alchemist, no spell could reset.

  And when, against all hope, a new supernatural female was born? The outcome did not change. As soon as she was claimed, sometimes within weeks, the sickness found her. Every attempt to hide them, to keep them unmarked and untouched, ended in tragedy. To love one was to sign her death sentence.

  The text was mercilessly blunt: there was no cure, no escape, no true resistance. The epidemic had not just culled their numbers, it had nearly erased the very existence of supernatural women.

  My stomach turned. That meant every mark, every claim, was a death sentence.

  The text continued, and I found myself reading faster, my fingers tightening on the edges of the pages as though the book might vanish if I didn’t devour every word. Before the epidemic, it said, humans and supernaturals had lived in almost complete separation, two worlds brushing past one another without colliding. But when the females began to die, that fragile distance shattered. The factions turned outward, desperate, brutal, clawing at any hope of survival. They waged war against humanity, dragging entire villages into fire and blood, taking the women in hopes that they would be immune. To be marked was no longer a bond due to love, it was a mark of power and a desperate gamble against extinction.

  I flipped the pages too quickly, breathtaking as I chased each new paragraph. Human females, once invisible to the supernatural eye, had suddenly become priceless. Their lives were weighed and traded, coveted and contested, their safety an illusion bought by power or violence. For every one hidden away in protection, another was hunted, claimed, or fought over like the rarest treasure. And all the while, the same truth loomed: a mark meant possession, survival for the male, but for the female, it meant chains, and perhaps an early grave.

  I closed the book, heart pounding, and leaned back in my chair. The world I had stumbled into was far bigger than me. Far more dangerous.

  I barely noticed the time slipping away until a shadow fell across the doorway. My breath caught. One of the men could have caught me here, reading what I wasn’t supposed to know. I slipped the book back onto the shelf and retreated, Bagel padding silently beside me.

  The corridors outside felt unreal. I was walking in a daze, my mind spinning with everything I had learned, my steps slow, almost mechanical. That’s when Riven appeared, his silver eyes catching mine and staring at me for several moments.

  “You look… distracted,” he said finally, his voice smooth but edged with curiosity. His eyes flicked over my face, lingering just long enough that I shifted under the weight of his attention. He tilted his head, like he was trying to catch the shape of my thoughts. “Too many wheels spinning up there. Dangerous thing, overthinking.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he was already pushing away from the wall, stretching in that lazy, deliberate way that made his presence fill the corridor. “Come on,” he said, jerking his chin toward the stairs. “I’m making dinner. And judging by the way you’re walking around like a ghost, you clearly need something else to do besides get lost in your own head.”

  I blinked at him, thrown off by the casual invitation, by the fact that he didn’t ask so much as assume I’d follow. His smile curved slow and sly when I didn’t immediately move. “What? Scared of a little chopping and stirring? Or are you planning on sulking in dark hallways until someone trips over you?”

  I hesitated, but the weight of my thoughts made me nod. The kitchen had always been mundane, comforting. Cooking with someone could ground me, make the fear easier to bear.

  Riven handed me an apron with a small smirk. “Don’t cut yourself. I’ve already lost one person to the stove this week.”

  I couldn’t help a small laugh, the tension easing slightly. “I’ll try not to join the statistics.”

  As we worked side by side, the warmth of the kitchen and the act of preparing food grounded me in a way that knowledge never could. He leaned over occasionally, brushing a hand against mine to guide my chopping or stir a pot, each contact making my pulse jump in a way I tried not to notice.

  “You’re too serious,” he said, eyes glinting. “Relax. You might enjoy this, cooking, me, whatever. I’m… convincing, you know.”

  I snorted, embarrassed, my cheeks burning. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “Am I?” His smile lingered, playful, warm. “Or maybe just… dangerously charming.”

  I felt the corner of my mouth twitch, trying not to laugh. “You’re lucky I’m not flinging vegetables at you right now.”

  He leaned closer, mock offense in his stance. “I’d risk it.”

  The conversation drifted to small things, favorite foods, old memories, idle teasing, but underneath, there was an unspoken acknowledgment of everything we both knew: the danger, the stakes, the uncharted territory I had stumbled into. Despite that, despite the threat of the world outside these walls, I allowed myself to relax, if only for a moment.

  By the time the meal was ready, I felt lighter. Not safe, not anywhere close, but connected to someone else in this strange, perilous world. Riven’s presence was a small anchor, a reminder that not everything here was meant to terrify me.

  And in that fleeting moment, amid the steam of cooking and the smell of warm bread, I allowed myself to hope and to forget everything that I had learned today.

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