Chapter 3

Freya POV

"It's time to go."

The words hung in the air between us, cold and final.

I stared at Edward, at the sword in his hand, at the faint wisps of smoke still curling up from the blackened stain on my carpet where that thing had died. My mind felt like it was moving through thick fog, thoughts fragmenting before they could fully form.

"I..." My voice came out hoarse, barely above a whisper. "I need to pack. Right? If I'm leaving, I should—I should bring clothes, and my laptop, and—"

"You don't need any of that." Edward's tone was flat, matter-of-fact, like he was reciting from a script he'd delivered a hundred times before. "The Academy dormitories will provide everything you require. If something is missing, I'll accompany you to purchase it."

I blinked at him, processing this. "Wait. You're saying there are stores in this... magic world?"

The look Edward gave me was somewhere between exasperation and resignation, like he'd just been asked if water was wet by someone who'd never seen an ocean. "The magical world is considerably more advanced than yours, Miss Granger."

Right. Of course. Because why wouldn't the secret magical dimension have shopping centers?

I nodded slowly, mechanically, my brain still struggling to catch up with reality. My gaze drifted past Edward to my desk, to my laptop with its blank screen, to the Moordale Academy acceptance letter still sitting there. To the ID card with my photo that I'd never posed for.

"Okay," I heard myself say. The word felt disconnected from my body, like someone else was speaking through my mouth. "Okay. I just... I need to use the bathroom first."

Edward's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes—suspicion, maybe, or calculation. He studied me for a long moment before giving a single, curt nod.

I grabbed my phone from the desk and practically ran for the hallway, my legs still shaky but functional enough to carry me. The bathroom door had barely closed behind me before I was fumbling with the lock, my fingers trembling so badly it took three tries to get it latched.

The moment the lock clicked into place, I collapsed against the door, sliding down until I was sitting on the cold tile floor. My whole body was shaking now, tremors running through me in waves. I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to stop the tears that were threatening to spill over.

This can't be happening. This can't be real.

But it was. The monster had been real. The sword had been real. Edward—with his pointed ears and his impossible blue eyes and his threats delivered in that calm, professional voice—was real.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket with shaking hands. The screen lit up, showing 3:47 PM and a string of missed notifications from the class group chat. My thumb hovered over the contacts app.

Mom. I needed to call Mom.

I pulled up her number and hit dial, pressing the phone to my ear so hard it hurt. It rang once. Twice. Three times.

"The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and try again."

Ice flooded my veins. I stared at the screen, at Mom's contact photo smiling back at me, and hit redial.

Same message.

My hands were shaking worse now. I scrolled to Dad's number. Hit call.

"The number you have dialed is not in service."

No. No, no, no, this wasn't—

Ethan. I pulled up my brother's contact, the photo of him making a stupid face at the camera last Christmas. Hit call.

"The number you have dialed is not in service."

A sob caught in my throat. I was cycling through contacts now, hitting redial over and over, my vision blurring with tears. Every single call, the same automated message. Like my entire family had just vanished from the phone network. Like they'd never existed at all.

I heard a soft click from the door lock.

My head snapped up just as the door handle turned, the mechanism disengaging with a faint blue glow that faded as quickly as it appeared. The door swung open slowly, deliberately, and Edward stood in the doorway, his expression carefully neutral.

"Hey! I'm using the bathroom" My voice came out high and broken, barely coherent. "I was in the bathroom!"

"I know what you were doing." Edward stepped inside, and I noticed for the first time that the sword was gone, vanished somewhere I couldn't see. He closed the door behind him with a soft click, then crouched down so we were at eye level. The movement was slow, unthreatening, like he was approaching a frightened animal. "You were trying to contact your family."

"How did you—" I cut myself off, shaking my head. Of course he knew. He probably knew everything. "My phone's broken. None of the numbers work. I need to—"

"Your phone is functioning perfectly," Edward interrupted, but his voice had lost some of that clinical edge. He sounded almost... patient? "The numbers you're calling—they're remnants from before the Protocol was enacted. In the current timeline, those contact entries shouldn't exist in your phone at all. The fact that they're still there is an anomaly, a ghost of the old reality that hasn't fully synced yet."

I stared at him, my mouth opening and closing soundlessly. "What are you talking about?"

Edward was quiet for a moment, and I caught something in his expression that looked almost like reluctance. Like he didn't want to say what came next. "The Academy has a Memory Erasure Protocol. To maintain the secrecy of the magical world, we don't just alter memories—we alter reality itself. Records, documents, photographs, communication logs. Everything gets rewritten to match the new timeline."

He paused, his sea-blue eyes holding mine with an intensity that made it impossible to look away.

"In your family's current reality, you were sent to a convent when you were very young. They believe you've been raised there your entire life. Your brother has grown up thinking you're his sister who lives in some distant monastery, someone he's never met and never thought to visit. Your parents..."

He hesitated again, and I saw something flicker across his face—discomfort, maybe. Or pity. "Your parents never considered bringing you home."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I stared at him, unable to process what I was hearing, my brain refusing to accept the meaning behind those carefully chosen phrases.

"That's not..." My voice came out as barely a whisper. "That's not true. That's not—I grew up here. In this house. I just contact them yesterday—"

"Those memories are real," Edward said quietly. "They're your real memories. But they're not theirs anymore. Not in this timeline."

My vision tunneled. The bathroom walls seemed to tilt and spin around me, and I couldn't breathe, couldn't think past the roaring in my ears.

Mom. Dad. Ethan.

They hadn't just forgotten me. I had never been part of their lives at all. All those years of family dinners and birthday parties and late-night talks and stupid sibling arguments—they existed only in my head now. In their world, I was a stranger. A distant daughter who'd been given away, shipped off to some convent, never to return.

Unwanted. Forgotten. Erased.

A broken sound escaped my throat—half sob, half gasp. My phone slipped from my numb fingers and clattered against the tile. I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them, trying to hold myself together as everything inside me fractured into pieces.

Edward didn't move closer, didn't reach out to touch me. He just stayed crouched there by the door, watching me fall apart with those impossibly calm blue eyes.

But when he spoke again, his voice was softer than I'd heard it before. "I know this is hard to understand. But the Protocol exists for a reason—to protect both worlds. If your family knew the truth, if they tried to find you or interfere, it would put them in danger. This way, they're safe. They can continue living their normal lives."

"Safe?" The word came out choked, bitter. "They don't even know I exist! How is that—"

"It's better than the alternative." Edward's voice was firm now, but not unkind. "Trust me, Miss Granger. The things that are hunting you—the things that attacked you just now—they won't stop. And anyone connected to you becomes a target. The Protocol doesn't just protect the secrecy of the magical world. It protects the people you love."

I wanted to scream at him. To tell him that he had no right to make that choice for me, to take away my family and tell me it was for their own good.

But I couldn't form words. Could barely breathe past the crushing weight in my chest.

So I just sat there on the cold bathroom floor, tears streaming down my face, clutching my knees and trying not to completely shatter.