Embedded Files
Sometimes strength isn’t about fighting back, it’s about refusing to break. As the coven prepares her for a ritual built on hollowing, Nellie faces the kind of hurt she thought she'd left behind. And while every minute drags her closer to the edge, Sam and Isaac race against a clock the coven has already begun to run out.
Word Count: 8.2k
TW: canon-typical violence. HEAVY ANGST. depictions of ritualistic activity, and physical abuse. talks about suicide. brief description of SA. use of mild language.
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Nellie wakes to the smell of burnt sage and blood. The air is thick with it; copper and smoke and something older, something that clings to her lungs like dust from a grave. Her wrists burn first, then her ankles. When she tries to move, the pain shoots up her arms, sharp and electric. The restraints aren’t rope. They are carved sigils, seared directly into the skin, glowing faintly red, humming with containment magic. Each symbol pulses in time with her heartbeat, a cruel metronome reminding her that she cannot move, cannot fight, cannot run.
She sits against damp limestone, now wearing some sort of white linen dress, almost like a nightgown. Her elbows are stiff from being held in place, and her arms have been spread out, seemingly attached to the cave walls. The floor beneath her is cold stone, smooth, ancient, and soaked in something that wasn’t entirely water. She can feel the residue of minerals and other lives clinging to it. Around her, the air shifts and whispers.
The low chanting has no beginning or end; voices overlap in a rhythm that feels more like breathing than speech. Circular, low, and inhuman. It sounds like drowning. Every rise of the chant feels like a tide pulling her under, and every pause is the gasp before the next wave hits.
She blinks against the dim, reddish light, trying to make sense of the shapes around her. Figures move in slow, deliberate patterns. A dozen witches in dark veils, tracing sigils into the air with ashen fingertips. The light of their magic reflects off the slick walls of the cavern, the entire room seeming to breathe with them.
“Where the hell —” Nellie tries, but her voice cracks. Her throat is dry, her body weak, her mind still hazy from whatever enchantment they used to drag her here.
Still, she fights.
Her muscles strained against the restraints. The sigils sear brighter, punishing her for trying.
“Come on,” she hisses under her breath, the old Winchester stubbornness flaring despite everything. “You think this’ll stop me?”
Her senses reach instinctively… or try to. The moment she reaches inward, her vision blurs, her head pounding with a static pressure that feels like someone grinding glass behind her eyes. The suppression sigils cut her off completely, a wall between her and her own power. It is like trying to breathe underwater.
Then the chanting stops. The sudden silence rings louder than the voices ever have. From the far side of the chamber, a woman emerges. She has dark black hair, partially braided, that frames her chiseled face and pale eyes. Her robes are pale gray, almost white, but the fabric shimmers faintly, like smoke shifting over silver. In her hand, she carries a knife with a blackened blade, etched with intricate runes that catch the red light. She walks as if through a cathedral, unhurried, reverent, and certain of her place. When she is close enough, she crouches down in front of Nellie with a smile that almost passes for tenderness.
“You dreamt of darkness once, didn’t you?” Solene’s voice is soft, but the way she says it makes the words feel like an accusation. She brushes her fingers lightly against the air above the girl’s chest, not touching her, but close enough that she feels the energy hum through her ribs. “Now,” she murmurs, “it dreams of you.”
Nellie glares up at her, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “You have no idea what you’re messing with.”
Her smile doesn’t falter. “Oh, Eleanor,” she says, her tone almost affectionate. “We know exactly what we’re waking.” She turns her head slightly and motions to the coven.
Without another word, the witches begin to move again in perfect unison. The air thrums. The chanting resumes, but this time it is lower, more deliberate, like something ancient being remembered for the first time in centuries. The words wind through the cavern, rhythmic and alien. Each syllable seems to drag the temperature lower than the natural cavern environment.
Nellie strains against the restraints again, the sigils burning bright enough now that smoke curls faintly from her skin. She catches one word between the waves of sound; one that isn’t an action, but rather a name.
Aetheris.
The syllables ripple through the chamber like a pulse, reverent and untranslatable, but heavy with intent. The moment it passes, her vision blurs. For an instant, she sees something vast, feminine, and ancient beneath the stone, watching her.
The air is much colder now. It smells of iron and burnt salt, sharp enough that her eyes water as they drag her from where she sits. Her legs barely work. Every movement sends fire through her veins where the restraints burrow into her skin. The witches’ hands are firm but eerily gentle, their touch impersonal, like surgeons working on something that has already stopped being human. They lay her within a perfect runic circle drawn across the cavern floor. Salt. Ash. Ground bone. The ingredients form concentric rings around her, each one humming faintly under the candlelight.
Her voice is hoarse when she finally manages to speak. “You think I’m just gonna let you do this?”
Solene doesn’t look at her. She is already kneeling at the edge of the circle, dipping the black-bladed knife into a bowl of dark liquid. “Let?” Her voice is almost curious. “You misunderstand, little seer. The will of the conduit doesn’t matter. Only the shape.”
The knife comes down with ritual precision, not deep. A clean, practiced slice across the palm. Another mirrored on the other hand. Two more down her forearms, symmetrical and deliberate. The pain is sharp, but it isn’t what made her gasp. It is the cold. Whatever enchantment laces the blade makes her blood ache as it leaves her body, like it doesn’t want to go. The witches collect it carefully, catching each drop in silver bowls. The liquid gleams too darkly, too thickly, as if already mixed with something else.
Then the smell hits her.
Old blood. Preserved. Somehow… familiar.
Her stomach turns before her mind catches up. Her sense reaches — instinctively, uncontrollably — and the answer slams into her like ice water.
She knows that blood.
The head witch looks up, reading her face. The faintest smile curves her mouth. “Blood calls to blood,” she says, tone almost kind. “It seems that your mother was of some use to us after all. In more ways than one. Her blood, both literally and figuratively.”
Nellie’s breath stutters, her throat closing up. “You —”
“Since when did you care about your mother?” Solene interrupts softly. “You were the one behind the knife that night.”
Her vision blurs again, from fury, from the sheer wrongness of it. Her hands clench, reopening the cuts, blood slick against her skin. “Go to hell,” she rasps.
The witch tilts her head. “We all do, in time. Your father would know more than anyone.”
She pours the contents of the bowls together. The mixture swirls— red and black, thin and thick — before settling into a deep maroon sheen. The coven’s chanting begins again, low and rhythmic, each voice layered on the next until the sound vibrates against Nellie’s bones. Each word crawls along her skin, across the cuts, through her veins. She feels it inside her chest, a tug, steady and merciless.
Her pulse slows.
The edges of the world blur.
Her psychic field flares open in protest, reaching outward even as her body weakens. The ground beneath her hums, faintly at first, then stronger, like veins beneath skin, the ley lines shifting and whispering in response to her.
She hears them.
She feels them.
A hum under the earth.
A rhythm under her pulse.
The witches’ chant climbs higher, their voices fusing into a single, unbroken note; a sound that doesn’t belong in human throats.
She tries to move, tries to summon even the slightest flicker of energy, but the suppression sigils only tighten. Sparks flare against her ribs, pain lacing up her spine. Still, she fights, biting down on a ragged sob, glaring at the witches through the sweat and blood streaking her face.
“I’m not your damn vessel,” she whispers.
Solene smiles again, faintly and pitying. “You will be soon.”
The chanting stops, and the air goes still.
Nellie, still struggling, lies in the center of the circle, her blood now mingling with her mother’s, her heartbeat echoing weakly in her ears.
The head witch raises the bowl, crimson light spilling over her fingers, and pours it across the runes carved into the floor. The mixture hisses as it touches the stone, and the entire circle begins to glow. The earth’s hum deepens into something almost like a voice.
The first rite is complete.
• • •
The forest is drowning in fog. Every tree looks the same. Pale, slick with dew, the branches hanging low like arms reaching for them. The air is so still that even their footsteps feel too loud.
Sam moves ahead with the EMF meter clenched in one hand, the device whining faintly against the silence. Isaac follows close behind, checking the small brass wards he’s laid out in a half circle on the damp ground. Each one pulses faintly with light. But faint isn’t enough.
He exhales through his nose, shaking his head. “She’s in here somewhere. The readings are all over the damn place.”
Sam doesn’t answer. He is pacing a line in the mud, jaw tight, scanning the shadows like he can will her to appear.
He squatted down beside the wards, adjusting one until the light steadied. “These picked up her energy once before, back when I first crossed your path. They tuned into her signature, remember?”
The Winchester nods absently, eyes fixed on the horizon. “If she’s anywhere near a ley line, it should amplify the signal.” His voice is low, half talking to himself. “She’s trying to reach out. She has to be.” The EMF spikes, then fizzles out again. He swears under his breath, smacking the side of it. “Come on, Nell. Give me something.”
The older hunter stands, brushing mud off his hands. “Hey.”
He doesn’t look at him.
“She’s strong,” Isaac continues, tone firm. “Stronger than either of us gave her credit for. If she’s breathing, those witches are already regretting it.”
His grip tightens on the EMF. His voice comes out raw. “You didn’t see her when she was taken. You didn’t —” He stops, biting the rest of the words back. His throat works as he forces out, quieter, “She’s just a kid.”
The hunter’s gaze softens. “Kid or not, she’s a Winchester.”
He huffs a bitter laugh, the kind that comes out more like a sigh. “Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
A gust of wind cuts through the trees, carrying with it a faint, metallic hum, almost too low to hear. The wards flicker, their faint light brightening for a heartbeat before fading again.
Isaac frowns, kneeling to check them. “She’s out there. The wards are still picking her up.”
Sam’s voice cracks when he speaks, but it isn’t weakness. It is the sound of someone holding himself together by will alone. “We’re not losing her. Not again.”
He nods, straightening up beside him. “Then we keep moving. We’ll find your daughter. And when we do —” He glances toward the fog, voice dropping to something almost like a prayer. “— she’s gonna give those witches absolute hell.”
The whisper of the wind and the faint hum of the wards fill the air, like the earth itself is trying to point the way.
Then the Winchester takes a long, steadying breath, pockets the EMF, and says quietly, “Let’s go.”
They move forward together, swallowed by the mist. Isaac occasionally looks at the wards in his hand, scanning the flickering lines. The symbols carved into their surfaces start to glow erratically, pulsing in uneven rhythms, sputtering like static. He adjusts one, then another, muttering under his breath until the readings steady just enough to form a faint hum.
Then his brow furrows. “Huh.”
Sam looks up sharply. “What?”
He squints at the oscillating pattern on his handheld meter. “She’s still sending signals, but…” He frowns, tapping the readout. “It’s not like before.”
The hunter steps closer, his heartbeat suddenly in his ears. “What do you mean, not like before?”
Isaac hesitates, his eyes narrowing. “They’re twisting her frequency.”
Sam’s stomach drops. “Meaning?”
“Not sure yet.” He tilts the meter, watching as the reading jumps again, a jagged pulse cutting through the noise. “But whatever they’re doing, it’s like tuning a radio — no, like an old TV antenna. They’re forcing her onto a different channel.”
The Winchester exhales sharply, running a hand over his face. “You’re saying they’re —what — using her powers like an antenna?”
He nods grimly. “Yeah. And from the strength of this signal, it’s big. They’re not just holding her. They’re prepping her. Getting her ready for something.”
Sam’s voice dropped low. “A ritual.”
He doesn’t argue.
The forest around them feels heavier now, the fog pressing in thicker, as though even the air was listening. Sam stands beside the other hunter, staring at the weakly glowing wards.
“Can you use this?” he asks, voice tight. “Her signal. Can it get us to her?”
Isaac’s eyes flick up to meet his. “Maybe. It’s not steady, but it’s something. I can triangulate the stronger pulses if they keep her channel open.”
His jaw clenches. “Then do it.”
The older hunter adjusts one ward, the faint hum growing sharper, angrier. “If we’re lucky, it’ll hold long enough to point us in the right direction.”
He glances toward the dark horizon, the first faint hints of dawn filtering through the fog. His hand unconsciously tightens around Nellie’s amulet in his pocket. “Luck’s overdue,” he mutters.
Isaac gathers the wards, each still faintly flickering in his hand, and starts moving again, their flashlights cutting through the fog like small, defiant stars. Behind them, the air hums once, faint and rhythmic. Almost like a heartbeat.
• • •
They strip the light from the room. Every candle is snuffed out until only the faintest shimmer of red sigil glow remains on the cavern walls and floor. The air thickens, colder and heavier, as though the rock itself has begun to breathe.
Nellie’s wrists ache where the restraints bite into her skin. The sigil burns have turned her veins into silver fire, dull but constant. She can feel the coven’s energy humming just beyond her skin, waiting for her to give in.
“Bring them,” Solene says softly.
The witches obey with a unanimous, “Yes, Mother.”
One by one, they carry in tall, black mirrors, their surfaces polished to an impossible sheen. The frames are carved bone, inlaid with runes that seem to shift whenever Nellie tries to focus on them. The mirrors are arranged in a perfect circle around her, nine in total. Each reflects a version of her: pale, bloodied, bound. But as the circle closes, the reflections begin to move. Subtle at first. A tilt of the head that doesn’t match hers. A blink out of rhythm. A faint smile she doesn’t make.
Her pulse quickens. “What… what is this?”
The head witch steps into view, the soft drag of her robe whispering across the stone. Her expression was calm, reverent, almost motherly. “You’ve built walls,” she says. “Little doors inside your mind that keep the noise out. We’re simply opening them.”
“I’m not —” Nellie starts, but her voice cracks. “You’re wasting your time.”
“Perhaps,” she murmurs. “Or perhaps you fear what’s waiting behind those walls.” She gestures, and the witches begin to chant.
The sound isn’t words, not exactly. It is a rhythm, slow and circular, rising and falling like waves. The candlelight flickers back to life, reflected infinitely in the mirrors until the cavern seems to stretch into eternity.
The reflections shift again.
Now, when Nellie looks, she sees herself, but younger. Bloodless. Her eyes are a bright, unnatural silver.
Solene steps closer, voice low and melodic. “Let your mind drown itself in memory. There’s no need to resist what you already are.”
The mirrors begin to hum, faint at first, then louder. The sound crawls behind her eyes, making her vision pulse. Her breath comes faster. The restraints bite deeper. The witches’ chanting now synchronizes with her heartbeat, until she can’t tell which sound belongs to her. Every reflection moves now. Not quite matching her. Their mouths whispering words she can’t hear, their eyes too knowing, too alive. The air in the circle ripples, heat and cold colliding in a way that makes her teeth ache.
Nellie closes her eyes, trembling, trying to force her mind to still. But even in the darkness behind her eyelids, she sees flickers and flashes of memory, color, and sound.
The witch’s voice floats through the noise. “Let go of what you think is real, Eleanor. The truth is kinder.”
The chanting rises. And then the mirrors pulse, all at once; a wave of energy strikes like a psychic concussion.
Nellie gasps.
The world bends.
The sound of the chanting blurs into a low, constant hum, like a heartbeat underwater. Her head hangs forward, sweat and blood mixing on her neck. The air feels thick enough to drown in. Every time she tries to focus, the edges of the world waver, like heat rising off asphalt.
The mirrors pulse again.
She forces her eyes up. Every reflection stares back, perfectly still. Then, one in front of her blinks, once, slowly, and smiles.
She freezes.
It tilts its head, the same way she does when she is thinking. The gesture looks wrong now; too calculated.
“Poor thing,” her reflection says, voice dripping like honey over glass. “You really thought you could fight this, didn’t you?”
Nellie’s breath catches. The voice is hers, but colder, hollow. A whisper from the back of her skull.
“You’re not me,” she hisses.
The reflection laughs softly, taking a step closer, but its feet don’t move. The glass ripples around it like water. “You keep saying that. As if you even know who you are.”
The other mirrors begin to stir, their versions of her flickering like bad film; some older, some younger, all wrong. A dozen pairs of silver eyes lock on her.
“You’ve spent your life pretending,” says another version, one with dark circles under its eyes and blood down its chin. “Pretending you’re a hunter. Pretending you’re not just a tool.”
“Pretending you’re not her,” whispers another.
Nellie strains against her restraints. “Shut up.”
The reflections don’t listen. They move closer, each one mouthing words she can’t quite hear until their voices layer softly, identical and unbearable.
Psychic.
Seer.
Vessel.
Her pulse spikes. The air presses against her chest like a weight.
The first reflection smiles again, too wide, too kind. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”
“What are you —”
The mirror’s surface ripples, and suddenly her own reflection reaches forward, hand pressing flat against the glass. The sigils on Nellie’s wrists flare, reacting, binding her in place.
“Let’s see the things you hide even from yourself,” it murmurs.
The witches’ chant deepens. The cavern begins to darken at the edges, the light sinking until only the mirrors glow, black glass alive with color.
Nellie’s reflection’s eyes turned white, glowing like a storm. “Let’s start with the people you think are your family.”
The sound of a child’s laughter echoes faintly — far away, familiar — and her throat goes tight.
The mirror’s surface ripples like a heartbeat.
And then the world folds in on itself.
The chanting blurs into something softer: the distant hum of lights, the steady tick of an old clock. The cavern smell of blood and ash fades, replaced by warm air and the faint scent of coffee.
Her vision clears. She is now standing in the bunker’s training room. It is quiet except for the shuffle of boots on concrete and the faint scrape of metal. Sam stands opposite her, practice blade in hand, that patient half-smile on his face, the one that says “I know you can do this” even when she doubts it herself.
“Keep your stance steady,” he says, voice calm, low. “You’re trying to win the fight before it’s started. Don’t. Let the other guy tell you who he is first.”
She grins, breathless. “You make everything sound like a philosophy class.”
He rolls his eyes. “Maybe I just like proving I’m smarter than you.”
She lunges, faster this time. He catches her arm easily, twisting. But she slips free, flipping the knife to her left hand. Their blades clash. The sound echoes sharply and brightly in the empty space.
For a moment, she forgets everything else. The coven, the pain, the fear. This is her uncle. Her family. The laughter echoes real, feeling like home.
Then the light flickers.
The warmth in his expression drains away. His eyes darken, shadows webbing beneath his skin.
The reflection’s voice slithers through the air. “He’s proud of you now. But wait until he sees what you become.”
Sam’s mouth opens, and the voice isn’t his anymore. “You’re not saving anyone, Nellie. You’re just the fuse.”
She stumbles back. “No. No, you’re not —”
He slashes the knife at her, the blade now very real. She yelps, jumping back far enough to miss the metal edge. He discards the knife and pounces on her, putting her into a headlock, not like the practice ones he used in training. She gasps, hitting his arm as a couple of warm tears trickle down her cheeks.
The room blinks out.
Now she is sitting on her bed in the small, dimly lit guest bedroom at the Winchesters’ house. Gentle hands move gently through her hair, fingers deft and sure. Eileen is sitting behind her. The rhythmic pull of the braid, the smell of the rosemary wash, the sound of her aunt’s faint hum. It is so achingly familiar that Nellie almost breaks down right there.
“You’ll get through this,” Eileen says, her voice soft. “Your sight will come back. You just need time.”
She reaches up, touching her hand. It is warm, real. “You always say that.”
The woman smiles. “Because it’s true.”
The reflection’s voice comes again, sliding between Eileen’s words like smoke through cracks. “She’ll leave you, too. When she realizes what you are. When she sees that every gift you have is just borrowed power waiting to rot you from the inside out.”
Her breath hitches. “Stop.”
Eileen’s fingers tighten in her hair, too tight. The braid yanks at her scalp. The love in her eyes fades, replaced by a cold, glassy stillness.
“She’ll see what you are,” the reflection whispers, “and she’ll look away.”
Nellie twists free, and the room shatters like glass.
She blinks and finds herself in the bunker kitchen. Morning light spills across the counter. A box of cereal sits open, milk left out, and in the middle of it all is her little cousin, Dean, cross-legged on the floor, dinosaurs and toy cars spread out in a battlefield.
He looks up, grinning that wide, gap-toothed grin. “Nellie! You gotta pick sides — the dinos are winning!”
Her chest eases. The tension breaks.
She kneels beside him, picking up a toy car, spinning it between her fingers. “You sure about that? I think the cars have a chance.”
“No way,” he replies, laughing, eyes bright with the kind of joy that makes everything else in the world fade. “The T. rex has armor this time.”
“Oh, well, I can’t argue with armor.”
He giggles, the sound small, bubbling, pure. She doesn’t realize she is crying until she sees the tear hit the toy car.
The reflection’s voice softens, almost tender. “You think you’ll ever see him again?”
Nellie freezes.
Dean looks up, but his grin is wrong now. His eyes flicker silver for just a moment.
“You think he’ll remember you when it’s over?”
Her heart drops. “No. No, stop —”
The light dims. The smell of ash creeps back into the air. The toys begin to melt between her fingers, colors bleeding together like ink in water.
The boy’s laughter warps like a digital distortion, cracking and looping, until it turns into a wail that echoes through the black.
She claps her hands over her ears. “Stop!”
The mirrors around her flared crimson. Each one reflects her, but not as she is. In one, her eyes go completely black. In another, she stands drenched in blood. In another, she is completely gone, replaced by the faint outline of something vast and feminine, watching.
The reflection closest to her smiles, gentle and cruel. “You don’t belong to them anymore.”
“Shut up.”
“You belong to Her.”
The air pulses like a heartbeat, the last fragments of laughter and warmth dissolving into silence. Her knees buckle. She screams, not from pain, but from the loss.
The mirrors pulse again once, twice, and the world around her reassembles itself with a sickening clarity. Gone is the bunker’s hum, the smell of coffee and old books. In its place comes a sour reek of cigarettes and cheap jasmine perfume. A thin sheet of sunlight filters through stained curtains, touching the warped linoleum of a kitchen she prayed she’d never see again.
Nellie freezes.
The sound of the refrigerator motor drones in the corner, uneven, always on the edge of dying. The wallpaper is still peeling in the same place above the sink, the same water stain shaped vaguely like a face. And there she is. Smaller, maybe twelve, sitting at the table with her knees drawn up to her chest, an untouched bowl of cereal softening in front of her.
From the living room comes a man’s voice, slurred, angry. “Where the hell’s my lighter?”
The child flinches, spilling milk onto her sleeve.
Her throat closes. “Stop it.”
The reflection’s voice slides through the air like a knife through fabric. “Don’t you miss it? The familiarity of it all? The sound of someone coming down the hall, never knowing if it’s a good day or a bad one?”
She turns slowly. Her reflection stands by the doorway, smiling. The same weary bruise under one eye, the same posture of someone who learned to make herself small.
“You used to think if you were quiet enough,” it murmurs, “if you tried hard enough, maybe she’d love you. Maybe she’d stay sober. Maybe he wouldn’t come back.”
The door slams open in the memory, Eleanor filling the frame, voice sharp, brittle, the kind that never misses its mark.
“Why are you so damn loud?! Always humming under your damn breath!”
Nellie’s younger self shrinks smaller as her mother stalks over to her, delivering a harsh slap to the girl’s face and shaking her shoulders.
The older Nellie clenches her fists, unable to look away from the all too familiar beatings. “That’s not—”
Her reflection steps closer, eyes gleaming. “You deserved it.”
“No.”
“You did.” The voice rises, echoing through the air as Eleanor drags her now bruised daughter towards the tiny hall closet. “You were weak, pathetic, born wrong. You made her hate you. You made them all hate you.”
The air in the room turns heavy, choking. The walls press inward. Every shadow flickers and faces appear in them: the men who came and went, their eyes glassy with drink and contempt. One of them laughs low and mean, the all too familiar voice standing out from the others.
She whips her head around, finding herself in the dingy living room. The TV flickers muted colors through occasional static. She spots her younger self, now fourteen, sitting on the couch, not really watching the show on the screen.
Her heart stops when a man walks into the room, a bottle in hand, and sits down next to the girl. It is Rick, buzzed from drinking, but enough to know what he was about to do. A chill runs up her spine, knowing what was about to happen next. She wishes she could move, that she could save herself, but the sigils still hold her back.
Her younger self had tensed the moment she heard the footsteps. It is one of those moments when she wishes her mother would come into the room. It doesn’t take Rick long to pull the girl close to his side. For most people, this scene would seem like a father wanting to spend time with his daughter. But for Nellie, it is a nightmare. She can’t pull her eyes away as the man starts to caress her, his hand soon rubbing up the girl’s thigh, far higher than appropriate. Fortunately for her, the world blurs before she knows where it goes, hiding the memory once again.
The reflection tilts its head, soft now. “You thought leaving fixed it? Thought running to your hunters made you clean? You’re still the scared little girl who begged monsters to notice her.”
Nellie’s nails dig into her palms. “That’s not true.”
The reflection smirks. “Isn’t it?”
The younger Nellie steps forward and speaks now, her voice trembling but clear. “She said I was cursed.”
Its grin widens. “She was right.”
The child’s voice cracks. “She said I ruined her life.”
“And you did,” the reflection hisses. “You were born to ruin lives. That’s what witches make: vessels that break things they love.”
Nellie drops to her knees. “Stop it!”
Somewhere above, lights flicker, the sound of her mother’s voice growing louder, splitting into two, then three. A chorus of every insult, every sneer, every door slam that has marked her childhood.
“Ungrateful bitch.”
“Worthless child.”
“Burden.”
The words echo, layered, until they become a rhythm, a chant. Salt begins to fall from the ceiling like snow, forming a circle around her. The younger Nellie disappears, leaving only the reflection, still smiling.
“You think you escaped,” it whispers. “But you’ll always be hers.”
Nellie gasps through reluctant tears, her strength collapsing beneath her. The sigils burn against her skin, bright and merciless. Each breath feels like pulling glass into her lungs. She stands there in the black, shaking, trying to remember which pain is real.
Then comes the sound of boots. Measured. Familiar. A shape moves through the dark — tall, broad-shouldered, wrapped in that worn leather jacket she knows better than her own reflection. For a heartbeat, her chest floods with relief so fierce it hurts.
“Dad…?”
Dean Winchester steps into the light. Except, no light really touches him. The shadows cling to his edges, curling like smoke. His face is older than she remembers, hard lines carved deeper, eyes like green glass catching nothing.
“You always did make a mess of things, didn’t you?”
The tone hits first. Not the gravel she knows from late-night visits, not the warmth she’d felt when he first appeared to her in that room in a homeless shelter years ago; gentle, almost awkward, a ghost trying to be a father. No, this is flat. Bitter. A weight that crushes.
Nellie’s voice cracks. “You’re not real.”
He smiles. It isn’t kind. “You keep saying that like it changes a damn thing.”
Her chest tightens. “You wouldn’t —”
“Wouldn’t what? Tell you the truth?” He takes a step closer, shadows spilling from his boots. “You think I didn’t know about you?”
Her pulse stutters. “You didn’t—”
“Oh, I knew.” His voice drops low, quiet enough that she has to strain to hear. “I knew, and I didn’t want to. Didn’t want you. Didn’t want to be a dad. Especially not to something like you.”
She stumbles backward. “Stop it.”
Dean kept coming. “You think I’d stick around for a freak? You think I’d bring you home? Introduce you to the family I actually cared about?”
Her throat burns. “No…”
He sneers. “Sam told you stories. Made me a hero. You really think that’s who I was?”
Tears blur her vision. “You were —”
“Was.” He says it like a curse. “Before I found out what you are.”
“Stop — please.”
He crouches down in front of her, close enough for her to smell the faint ghost of gunpowder and whiskey. “You’re everything I spent my life hunting. A mistake with a pulse.”
Her hands shake. “You wouldn’t say that. You saved me.”
“I saved a kid too stupid to die right.”
Her breath hitches, a sound between a sob and a gasp. “Don’t —”
“You think I showed up that night because I cared? You were just another unfinished job, Nellie.” His voice softens, and that, somehow, made it worse. “Should’ve let you finish what you started.”
The world splits open inside her. She is back in that homeless shelter, the one with the flickering light and the cold cup of tea on the side table. She is eighteen again, tear-streaked, shaking, the pocketknife still in her hand. And in front of her: him. His ghost. The real Dean, the one who’d stopped her, who’d held her hand and said she wasn’t alone.
Now that same voice says, “You should’ve done it.”
Nellie screams, raw and broken, “Stop! Please stop!”
His eyes don’t flicker. Don’t soften. “You’re not supposed to be here. You’re just making everyone’s life harder. Sam’s. Eileen’s. Even that little kid. You think Dean doesn’t notice you flinch every time someone touches you? You think he doesn’t see what you are?”
She presses her hands over her ears. “You’re lying —”
“Am I?” His voice rises, filling the air like thunder. “You left a trail of bodies, Nellie! All because you can’t figure out what side you’re on. You think you’re helping Sam? You’re just dragging him back into the same damn mess I tried to keep him out of!”
Her body shakes, every muscle trembling with the effort not to collapse. “Please…”
“You don’t belong with them.”
“Yes, I do!”
Dean’s face twists. “You don’t! You belong with the freaks. With the coven. With the things that bleed red when the light hits them wrong. You’re not family. You’re fallout.”
That word breaks something inside her.
Fallout.
The silence that follows is worse than the shouting.
Then, quieter, almost gentle, he says, “You should’ve gone through with it that night.”
Her vision blurs, salt and blood in her mouth.
“Would’ve been cleaner.” He leans in, his breath cold against her ear. “Would’ve saved everyone a lot of trouble.”
Her heart stops.
“Wasn’t worth saving,” he whispers. “Never was.”
The words hit harder than any blade.
Nellie’s knees buckle, her palms hit the floor. The stone beneath her glowed faintly with the red pulse of the sigils carved there, feeding on her pain, amplifying it, looping it back through her like static.
Dean straightens, looking down at her with disgust that feels too human. “You really think Heaven’s got a place for you? Hell doesn’t even want you.” Then he is gone.
Her throat makes a broken sound, cutting off by the heaving of her lungs. The man who broke the rules of Heaven just to be present in his daughter’s life, the one who gifted her the pendant around her neck on her birthday, the one who sat and talked with her after she had nearly killed herself, said all the things she ever told herself. Just a few hours ago, he comforted her, telling her how proud he was of her and that he knew she could do it. She wants to believe it isn’t really Dean, but what if this is what he truly feels?
The cavern returns, cold and pulsing with crimson light. The witches’ chant bleeds through the air, rising, triumphant. Nellie stays on her knees, shaking, tears cutting tracks through the grime and blood on her face. Her body had forgotten how to breathe right; every inhale shallow, every exhale trembling. The taste of salt and iron fills her mouth. For the first time in years, she doesn’t fight the voice that tells her she isn’t enough.
She just whispers, to no one, to everyone, “I’m sorry.”
• • •
The woods are quiet. Too quiet. Even the nocturnal insects have gone silent; the air presses thick around them, as if it is listening. Isaac crouches beside the hood of the Impala, his wards spread out across the metal top, faintly glowing. He frowns, checking one, then another. The runes pulse weaker than before.
“Damn it,” he mutters. “She’s fading.”
Sam stands a few feet away, flashlight sweeping the tree line, jaw tight. “What do you mean, fading?”
He gestures to the nearest ward, the light barely a flicker now. “Her frequency’s still there, but it’s… breaking up. They probably got her on the same wavelength as whatever they’re summoning.”
The Winchester leans over the map. The pen marks and sigils scrawled across it look like veins branching from the heart of Brinley Hollow. Isaac taps a section near the edge.
“Here. These old mining tunnels. Haven’t been active since God knows how long, but the geology lines up with the ley grid. If I were running a coven ritual, that’s where I’d dig in.”
Sam stares at the spot, his breath unsteady. “How far?”
“Couple of miles, give or take.”
His hand goes to the amulet in his pocket. It has long since gone cold. Dead even. “She doesn’t have much time,” he says quietly.
The older hunter packs up the wards, jaw set. “Then we stop talking about it and move.”
He nods, climbing into the Impala, the urgency buzzing under his skin like electricity. The engine roars to life, cutting through the stillness. As they tear down the dirt road, the forest blurs past in streaks of black and gray. His hands are tight on the wheel, knuckles white, his mind racing through every worst-case scenario. She’s strong. She’s survived worse. She’s — But the image of her amulet lying in the dirt burns in his head like a brand.
Isaac glances over at him, reading what Sam doesn’t say. “We’ll get her back.”
He doesn’t answer. His jaw works once, the muscles in his throat tighten. Finally, he says, “We have to.”
The wards in the older hunter’s lap flicker once, weak, but still alive. A pulse of light, like a heartbeat. He stares at it, then nods to himself. “Hold on, kid. Just hold on.”
The Impala roars into the dark, chasing the last thread of her signal before it goes out.
• • •
The cavern pulses with light that isn’t light at all; a deep, rhythmic thrum echoing from somewhere far below. The witches move in slow unison, their chanting now soft enough to sound like breathing, like the cave itself inhales and exhales with them.
Nellie lies motionless on the altar. Her pulse is faint, but her eyes are open, glassy, reflecting the red glow crawling across the walls.
Solene stands over her, hands clasped, the picture of serenity. “Every vessel must be made clean,” she murmurs. “Every spirit, stripped bare.”
She gestures, and two witches step forward, pulling a heavy shroud from a basin at the foot of a stone table. The stench hits first — copper and rot, old blood thickened to syrup. Nellie gags weakly, and her stomach lurches.
She dips both hands into the basin, fingers coming up slick and dark, and begins to paint.
The first mark runs from the girl’s collarbone down her sternum, a sigil drawn in a mixture of her mother’s blood and her own. The flesh hisses. Smoke rose. Nellie’s scream tears through the chamber, raw and human against the chant’s inhuman harmony.
Solene’s voice never wavers. “Body to blood. Blood to spirit. Spirit to the vein.”
Each rune follows the last — across her ribs, curling around her wrists, spiraling down her legs. Every symbol burns a different color as it sets: red for flesh, gold for soul, white for balance.
By the time she reaches the final mark, Nellie’s body arches against the restraints, the air trembling with psychic static.
She dips her fingers again, then presses them to the space above the girl’s heart. “The Spiral Eye,” she whispers. “The gaze of Aetheris.” The mark sears into place, a curling, hypnotic sigil that glowed red, then gold, then white-hot.
The cavern shakes. Dust rained from the ceiling. The candles flare with unnatural life, their flames twisting sideways. Nellie’s head snaps back, eyes wide, but she isn’t seeing the room anymore. Her sight stretches outward. Through the rock, through the tunnels. She sees everything: roots coiling like veins through stone, ley lines glowing like arteries of molten light. And beneath them all is something vast. Something awake. A shape that isn’t a shape. A woman wrought of shadow and radiance, endless and contained at once. Her hair flows like ink through water. Her eyes burn white and empty. The air vibrates with her name: Aetheris, the Fallen One.
Nellie’s heart slams against her ribs. The mark over it blazes brighter, synchronizing with the rhythm below. The sound isn’t a voice, not really. It is a resonance, humming through every nerve she has.
Solene leans close, eyes fever-bright. “She sees you now. And she is beautiful, isn’t she?”
The presence stirs. The cavern’s hum deepens into a single, sonorous tone that matches the scream rising in the girl’s throat.
It isn’t fear.
It is recognition, dreadful and intimate, as though something ancient inside her had just answered the call.
Her veins glow silver, her tears white. The Spiral Eye on her chest pulses once, twice. Then the light collapses inward, pulling everything silent.
For a breathless instant, the world seems to stop. Then the chanting resumes, quieter now, reverent, as if the coven is praying over a miracle. Nellie lay still, her body trembling with the aftershock, the faint shimmer of energy still radiating from her skin.
The head witch straightens, her voice soft, almost loving. “The conduit is ready.”
No one notices that a single tear still glows faintly on the stone beneath Nellie’s cheek, burning like a fuse that hasn’t yet gone out.
The air now hangs heavy with incense and iron. The chanting stops, and the witches slowly file out, muttering about preparations for the final ritual, but its echo still clings to the stone, a ghostly hum low in the dark.
Nellie is still on the floor inside the runic circle, motionless except for the faint rise and fall of her chest. Veins traced her skin like fine silver threads, pulsing faintly where blood and magic meet. Each breath she takes shimmers in the air, visible in the candlelight, silver edging in red.
Solene crouches beside her, calm and composed, a figure of devotion rather than victory. She wipes the blood from her hands with a dark cloth, her eyes never leaving the girl’s face.
“Rest, Eleanor,” she murmurs, the words soft as prayer. “The body remembers what the mind cannot. And we need our conduit in peak condition for the Fallen One.” She sets the cloth aside, her tone gentling further, almost maternal. “You’ve done beautifully. The threshold opens because of you. And in just a few minutes, we will be ready to do the ritual.”
Across the chamber, Camille lingers in the shadows, arms wrapped tight around herself. Her gaze flicks between Nellie and Solene, torn between fascination and guilt, reverence and fear.
Her throat works as she swallows hard. “She… she looks human still.”
The head witch doesn’t glance her way. “For now.” She dips her hands into a bowl of clear water, washing the last streaks of blood from her palms. “The transition will finish once the alignment completes. Then she will be more than human. Better.”
Her voice is thin, almost breaking. “And if she can’t hold it?”
Solene finally turns toward her. The torchlight catches in her eyes, and for a moment, they gleam gold. “Then she burns. And the Fallen One takes what remains.”
The woman flinches, gaze dropping to the floor.
She watches her for a long moment before speaking again, quiet, but sharp enough to cut. “Don’t pity her, Camille. Pity those who’ll try to take her from us.”
Silence follows. Only the soft drip of water from the cavern roof fills the space between them. Then, from the runic circle, the faint sound of a breath drawn too sharply. Nellie’s fingers twitch.
Solene tilts her head, watching. A smile curves her mouth. “There now. She stirs.”
Her eyelids flutter once, twice, and then open. Her irises blaze in the dim light, red and gold swirling together in perfect symmetry. For a moment, she looks almost divine… and utterly wrong.
The head witch’s smile widens, reverent and terrible. “Balance,” she whispers. “At last.”
The air goes still, but not empty. Solene stands, a confident smirk still evident on her face. Both women leave the chamber, their footsteps fading into the tunnels until only the echo of dripping water remains. Candles gutter low, their flames trembling like they didn’t want to stay here either.
Nellie’s skin burns where the sigils had been carved and painted, each mark a living brand that pulses in time with the earth’s heartbeat. The ropes are slick with her own blood. The air reeks of copper and smoke.
For a long time, she hasn’t moved. She can’t. Then, when the last sound of discussion has vanished down the tunnel, her breath breaks. It comes out as a quiet, stuttering sob, small at first, like she doesn’t want anyone to hear, even now. Her chest heaves, the sob turning into another, rougher, the kind that scrapes the throat raw. She bites her lip until she tastes iron.
“Stop,” she whispers to herself. “It wasn’t real. It wasn’t —”
But the words won’t stick.
Dean’s voice still echoes in the dark, cold and absolute: “You think I wanted you? You think I was proud? You should’ve finished it.”
Her shoulders shake. “It wasn’t real,” she says again, quieter. “It wasn’t.”
But memory is cruel. It replays everything she’s seen: Sam’s face hard and distant, Eileen turning away, little Dean calling her name and vanishing into smoke. Every twisted image the coven has burned into her mind. And maybe… maybe there is a sliver of truth in it. Because why else would Sam have been keeping her at arm’s length recently? Why does she have to prove herself again and again just to be useful?
“Maybe he just —” she swallows the rest. The word hurt. “Maybe he just doesn’t want me there.” Her throat closes. Tears blurred the candles into smears of light. She presses her cheek against the cold stone. The Spiral Eye sigil above her heart throbs in time with her pulse. “I’m not what he wanted,” she breathes. “I never was.”
The sound of her own voice startles her — small, cracked, so different from the sharp-witted girl who’d stood beside hunters and faced monsters. She wants to believe this is just exhaustion, magic residue, lies spun by a coven that feeds on fear. But alone in the dark, bound and hollow, it feels true. A single tear slides down her temple and falls to the stone, glowing faintly where it lands. Silver at first, then red. It hisses once, a tiny spark before fading.
For a long time, Nellie just lies there, trembling in the quiet, trying not to believe the things she’s seen, trying harder not to accept the ones that feel too close to right.
• • •
The forest is still except for the crunch of boots over frost-bitten leaves. Dawn hasn’t broken yet, but the horizon hints at the faint light through the trees, a bruised violet fading to gray. Sam’s breath comes heavy, visible in the chill. His fingers tighten around the EMF as it flickers violently, readings spiking and collapsing in rapid bursts. The wards in Isaac’s hands glow a steady, sickly gold.
They are close.
Too close.
The earth beneath them throbs. Not shaking, but beating, a slow, subterranean pulse that carries through their soles and up their spines.
Isaac slows first, scanning the slope ahead. The rock face opens into shadow, framed by the remnants of old mining scaffolds, long rusted and half-buried in roots. The air pouring from the entrance is warm. Wrong.
Sam stops beside him, the EMF howling, the sound sharp enough to hurt. His voice comes low, breathless. “This is it.”
The older hunter glances at him, eyes hard but not unkind. “Then let’s raise some hell to get her back.”
For a moment, neither moves. The forest seems to hold its breath, every sound swallowed by the heartbeat beneath the earth. Then they step forward, twin silhouettes swallowed by the cave’s mouth, vanishing into the dark.
In the tunnels far below, the candles have long since burned low. The air shimmers faintly red, thick with the residue of blood and magic. Nellie’s chest rises and falls in time with the pulse of the ley lines, every beat echoing through the rock like a drum. Her eyes move behind closed lids, caught in dreams that aren’t dreams at all.
Somewhere deeper in the cavern, unseen, voices begin to chant again, low, reverent, building like a tide.
Solene’s voice rises above them, soft and triumphant, carrying on the hum of power itself. “The veil thins. It is time for the Fallen One to walk amongst us.”
The light flares once across the walls and goes out.
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