Virelle: Origin of the Outcast (1/8)

Chapter One: The Silent Storm

The rain hit the windows like small fists, persistent but muffled by years of city dust. Virelle sat at the edge of the bed, her fingers trailing the frayed thread of the comforter, unraveling it one loop at a time. The apartment smelled like old coffee and damp wool, a scent that had become the background noise of her life. Her boyfriend—if the term still applied—moved through the kitchen like a storm cloud, passive-aggressively loud, every slammed cabinet door a punctuation mark to the silence she had learned not to break.

She didn’t speak. She rarely did these days. Not unless spoken to. It was safer that way.

In her journal, hidden between the pages of an old textbook, she sketched symbols she couldn’t name. Spirals. Eyes. A net of lines that caught on each other like spider silk. She didn’t know why she drew them, only that they made her feel less like she was disappearing.

Virelle was eight the first time she heard the dolls speak. Whispering in the dark, their glossy eyes catching the moonlight like they knew something she didn’t. Every morning, she’d find them in different places—one staring from the closet, another sitting upright on the windowsill. She told her mother.

“You need to stop being dramatic,” her mother snapped, eyes cold over her cup of instant coffee. “Those things don’t move unless you touch them.”

But Virelle never touched them. Not after that.

Her gaze comes in and out of focus as she stares blankly out the window.

Droning into the rain, somehow she starts to see the sun painting the car in gold as it curved around the highway’s sharpest bend. This is what she and her father–or who she thought was her father– lovingly referred to as, Dead Man’s Curve. The man laughed, one hand on the wheel, the other holding a soda cup out for her to take a sip. The wind tangled her hair as the music blasted, and for a moment, the world felt safe.

“You’re more than what she says,” he said, nodding ahead like the road itself was a promise. “Don’t let the world shrink you.”

She’d never forget that. Not the curve. Not the words.

Virelle’s gaze melted into the skyline, where the rain slicked neon across the pavement like brushstrokes on a dirty canvas. The city was ugly in the most beautiful way—untamed, unpredictable. A mirror of her own soul, maybe. Her fingers ghosted over the cracked windowpane, a subtle yearning in the way she leaned forward, as if she could step through it and vanish into something else. Something freer.

Behind her, the fridge door opened and slammed again. A beat passed.

“You’re doing it again,” he muttered.

She didn’t move.

“Seriously?” His voice rose, sharp and jagged. “Just stand there all moody and silent while I bust my ass trying to keep this place from falling apart?”

She turned slightly, enough to see his outline reflected in the glass—shoulders tight, hands flexing at his sides.

“I wasn’t saying anything,” she said, voice barely above a whisper.

“Exactly. That’s the problem.” He stepped closer, the weight of his anger pushing the air out of the room. “You never say anything unless I drag it out of you.”

Her jaw tensed. “Because every time I do, it turns into this.”

He scoffed, pacing now. “Unbelievable. You act like I’m the villain in your little sad-girl movie. Like I’m the bad guy just for asking what’s going on in that mixed up little head of yours.”

“I didn’t say that.” Her voice cracked on the edge.

“You don’t have to.” He turned on her, eyes narrow. “I see it. The way you check out. Like I’m not even real. Just some guy you tolerate until something better comes along.”

She flinched. Not because he was wrong—but because part of her wished he was right.

“I’m just tired,” she murmured, reaching for any excuse.

He leaned in, voice low and venomous. “No. You’re done. With me. With this. Just say it.”

She stared at him, at the desperation hiding behind his fury. She couldn’t speak. Not because she didn’t have words—but because she’d swallowed them so many times, they no longer recognized the light.

A crash echoed as he swept a mug off the table. It shattered against the floor. She didn’t move.

“You don’t get to play silent forever,” he growled, storming toward the front door. “Eventually, even ghosts get exorcised.”

The door slammed. The window shook.

And Virelle, still facing the rain, whispered to herself, “Maybe I’m already gone.”

Virelle takes a deep breath and lays back on the bed plopping her head onto the pillow, she can’t help but feel a wave of relief that he’s not in the house. That doesn’t stop her mind from wandering...

She was fourteen. Her mother’s voice was flat, like someone reading a grocery list. “He’s gone. Don’t ask questions.”

Virelle stood in the hallway. The house echoed. She waited for him to come back. He never did.

Steam rolled across the bathroom mirror, and Virelle stood under the stream of water, eyes closed, breath shallow. Then—

“Everything is a net…”

The voice wasn’t hers. It wasn’t human. It was layered, deep and ancient.

“…Energy clings. You are the key.”

Her eyes snapped open. The mirror was covered in fog, but shapes were forming in the glass. Symbols. Spirals. The same ones from her journal. She reached out and wiped the mirror clean—

Her reflection stared back with glowing eyes. Faint. Flickering. Gone.

___________________________________________________________________________

The late afternoon air hung heavy with the kind of humidity that made everything feel slower, like the city itself was exhaling in exhaustion. The rain had subsided, though the street still slick with oil tainted rainbow waters. Virelle’s boots clacked against the cracked pavement as she walked her usual path to the bookstore café where she worked part-time—a fifteen-minute trek that always took thirty with the weight she carried.

Her journal was in the pocket of her oversized coat, close to her hip, tucked beneath the fabric like a secret. It had been buzzing under her skin all morning, a strange hum that wasn’t quite heat and wasn’t quite vibration. Just a presence. Like the words she’d written in it had started listening back.

She stood at the crosswalk, waiting for the signal to change. The light flicked green. She remembers her eyes in the mirror just an hour before. Cars slowed. Pedestrians moved like particles in some invisible pattern. She stepped off the curb, halfway across when it happened.

A sound—low at first, like distant thunder—then rising, screaming toward her.

A semi-truck barreled down the side street, horn blaring, tires screeching against slick asphalt. The driver wasn’t stopping.

In an instant, time split open.

The world cracked around her, sound turning sharp and metallic, then warped into a deep underwater murmur. Everything slowed. The truck’s windshield fractured into spiderwebs of shimmering glass mid-air, the shards hovering like crystalline insects caught in amber. The roar of impact folded backward, as if someone had taken the film of reality and pressed rewind.

Virelle felt herself suspended—arms still halfway raised, breath caught like a thread in her throat. Her hair floated in the air around her like she was underwater. Her eyes moved, but everything else was locked in place.

And then—like a rubber band snapping—reality snapped back.

She was standing on the sidewalk again. Unharmed. The crosswalk empty. The light blinking calmly. The truck was gone. No wreckage. No driver. Just traffic as usual.

Nobody looked at her. No one screamed. It was as if it had never happened.

Except her body remembered. Her knees buckled, and she caught herself on a metal lamppost, its surface shockingly cold beneath her fingers. Her breath came fast, shallow. Her ears rang like after a firework.

She reached into her coat pocket. Her journal pulsed with heat. Not burning, but alive. The leather cover throbbed gently, as though it too had just taken a breath. When she opened it with trembling fingers, the last page had changed.

A symbol—one she didn’t draw—was burned into the parchment in soft, black ink. A swirling net of loops and curves, radiating from a central spiral.

And beneath it, words in her own handwriting, though she hadn’t written them:

“The veil is thin. You called it back.”

Virelle stared down at the journal, the city spinning gently around her.

The veil is thin.

She had stopped time… or reversed it… or bent it.

And no one noticed.

She arrives at home to the red flag on her mailbox being positioned up. She hadn’t been expecting mail.

The envelope was thick, unmarked, resting in the mailbox like a trap.

It didn’t have a return address. No postage. Just her name in looping ink, as if someone had known she’d open it regardless.

She carried it up the stairs with numb fingers, her footsteps echoing in the quiet hallway like someone else’s. When she stepped into the apartment, she locked the door behind her. Twice.

She sat cross-legged on the faded rug in the middle of the room, the envelope heavy in her hands. Something about it pulsed. Her journal lay nearby, still warm from the time-slip. Her hands shook as she opened the flap.

Inside: a collage of memory and horror.

Photos—aged, curling at the edges. One showed a hospital room. She was a baby, bundled in blankets. But the man holding her wasn’t her stepfather. Wasn’t anyone she knew. His eyes were too dark, his smile too sharp.

Another photo—grainy, blown-out flash—showed that same man standing beside a young woman with bruises barely hidden beneath her sleeves.

Medical records followed. Her name. His. A DNA match. A sealed custody file.

Then the newspaper clipping.

A headline: “LOCAL MAN QUESTIONED IN DISAPPEARANCE OF THREE WOMEN—RELEASED WITHOUT CHARGES.”

A photo of the same man. Older. Slick hair. Cold eyes.

Someone had circled his face in red ink. Not once, but over and over—until the paper had almost torn.

And then, tucked at the bottom of the envelope, a note. Scrawled in hurried, jagged handwriting:

“The man you called father was never yours.
Blood knows blood.
He is watching.”

Virelle’s breath caught.

The room spun.

She dropped the envelope. Its contents spilled across the floor like puzzle pieces she didn’t want to solve. Her hands pressed against the carpet, grounding herself. Her nails dug in.

The temperature dropped.

The lightbulb in the ceiling flickered once. Then again.

From the hallway came a creak.

The dolls from her childhood whispered from the back of her mind.

Watching.
Waiting.

She rose to her feet slowly, every nerve alert. The hallway outside the apartment seemed to stretch longer than it should. Shadows pooled where they hadn’t been seconds ago. The air shimmered, heavy with static.

Then—

A knock at the door.

Not a friendly knock. A single, deliberate thud.

She froze.

Ryder still wasn’t back from his hissy fit and he would never knock.

Another knock. Louder. Slower. Almost a pulse.

Then—

From the other side of the door, a voice like dead leaves scraping the pavement:

“Hello, Virelle.”