Returning to normal life was never really an option.
Not after outmaneuvering a demon like Azazel. Not after manipulating fate itself.
But Adam tried.
He went to school. Did homework. Watched TV with his mom. Pretended that everything was fine. That he was just a normal, quiet fifteen-year-old with a part-time job and a few hobbies.
Days blurred together in a routine that felt increasingly hollow. At school, he took notes and answered questions, his mind half-elsewhere, parsing demonic omens in weather patterns while his classmates discussed The Great Gatsby. At home, he helped with dinner and talked about college applications with his mom, all while listening for unusual sounds outside, checking salt lines when she wasn't looking.
"You seem distracted lately," Kate said one evening as they cleared the dinner dishes. Her nurse's eyes missed nothing—the tension in his shoulders, the way he kept glancing at the windows.
"Just stressed about midterms," Adam replied with the practiced ease of someone who had been lying to protect someone for years.
Kate studied him a moment longer, then nodded. "Well, don't stay up too late studying. Even genius brains need sleep."
Adam gave her a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Yes, ma'am."
But the dreams didn't let him rest.
Every night for the last weeks—symbols, carved in stone. Long, curved corridors. Whispers in a language he didn't know, but felt like it knew him. Sometimes he saw a woman standing in the dark, holding a lantern.
Always watching.
In the dreams, Adam would follow her down winding passages that seemed to breathe, walls slick with something that might have been water or something else entirely. The air was heavy, ancient, pressing against his skin like a living thing.
And always, that circular symbol, appearing on walls, on doorways, sometimes carved into flesh—complex, almost biological, like a cell viewed under a microscope, but with deliberate patterns that suggested language rather than nature.
He woke each time cold, sweating, and more curious than afraid.
These weren't like his "Supernatural memories"—they didn't feel borrowed from another life. They felt like they were trying to tell him something. Something about himself. Something about his blood.
Professor Reed had suggested keeping a dream journal, tracking patterns, looking for connections to his waking life. But Adam already knew these weren't ordinary dreams. They were messages. Breadcrumbs. Leading him somewhere.
He just didn't know where.
It all changed the night he was helping his mom clean out the hall closet and found an old photo tucked between the pages of a faded recipe book.
"I didn't know Grandma Maggie liked to bake," Adam said, flipping through the yellowed pages of handwritten recipes for sourdough bread and apple pie.
Kate laughed. "My Mom? God, no. She was terrible in the kitchen. That was probably her mother's cookbook. My grandmother was the baker in the family."
Adam was about to close the book when something slipped from between the pages—another black-and-white photograph.
His great grandmother, Elizabeth—only this time, she wasn't posed formally. She was standing beside three other people, all dressed in practical gear. Belts with knives. A woman holding a crossbow. Behind them, what looked like a stone wall covered in moss and carved symbols.
In the bottom corner, written in pencil:
"The Ellwood Job — 1956"
Adam's breath caught. There, on the stone wall behind the group, was the symbol from his dreams—the complex circular pattern that had been haunting his sleep for weeks.
"Mom?" he called, his voice carefully neutral. "What's this?"
Kate glanced over, then shrugged. "Just some old photo of your great grandmother. She used to go on these... expeditions, I guess you'd call them. Historical research, she always said."
"With weapons?" Adam held up the photo, pointing to the crossbow.
Kate squinted at it, then frowned slightly. "It was a different time. Lots of wild animals in those days, I suppose."
"Where's Ellwood?" he asked.
"Old logging town about thirty miles west of here. Been abandoned for decades." Kate took the photo, studied it for a moment longer, then handed it back. "Your great grandmother was... eccentric. Always interested in old places, old stories. My father said she was chasing ghosts."
Adam stared at the photo long after his mom had gone to bed.
Ellwood. The symbol. The dreams. It couldn't be coincidence.
Was this the missing piece? The explanation for his accelerated healing, his unnatural reflexes, his strange dreams?
The next day, Adam climbed into the attic.
He'd been up there before—once, years ago. But never with a purpose.
Dust choked the air. The lightbulb buzzed faintly, casting weak yellow light over forgotten furniture and cardboard boxes labeled in his mother's neat handwriting. Christmas decorations. Tax records. College textbooks.
And a single trunk in the corner, its brass fixtures green with age, marked simply "E.M."
Elizabeth Milligan.
Adam knelt before it, heart pounding. The lock had long since rusted through. He pried it open carefully, wincing at the groan of ancient hinges.
Inside were odds and ends of a life he'd never known—a silk scarf, a set of tarnished silver brushes, a collection of postcards from across Europe. Nothing supernatural. Nothing that screamed "hunter."
Disappointed, he scanned the old floorboards, pushing boxes aside, tapping until he heard it: a hollow thunk.
He pried the board loose with a screwdriver.
Inside was a bundle wrapped in oilcloth.
He pulled it out and opened it carefully. Inside were three things:
• A leather-bound journal, the initials E.M. pressed into the cover.
• A folded map, stained and brittle with age.
• A small silver pendant, etched with a symbol—circular, complex, almost biological in shape. The same one from his dreams.
His breath caught.
The journal's pages were filled with the same precise handwriting he'd seen on the back of the photographs. Entries dated from the 1930s through the late 1960s detailed what could only be described as hunting expeditions—not for deer or elk, but for things that moved in the shadows. Things with names that made Adam's skin crawl.
"Tracked the Schwarzwald Heuler to its nest," one entry read. "Jakob insists on using the traditional methods—silver and rowan. I know better. It's the blood that matters. Always the blood."
Another entry, dated 1946: "First expedition since the war. The Ellwood tunnels remain sealed, thank God. The markings still hold. The Old Blood sleeps, but for how long? We must be vigilant."
And then, the last entry, dated October 1957: "They're coming for what remains of our line. I've hidden what I can. Placed wardings. The children must never know—must never be drawn into this life. But if the blood awakens, if the dreams begin, this journal will find its way. Blood calls to blood. And the Old Blood never truly dies."
Adam stared at the pages, mind racing. The Old Blood. The dreams. The bloodline she mentioned—was it the same mysterious heritage he'd begun to suspect after finding the earlier photographs?
The map, when unfolded, showed the region around Windom. A series of X marks dotted the countryside, with one prominent circle around what must be Ellwood. Notes in German and what might have been Latin filled the margins.
And the pendant... the pendant seemed to pulse warmly in his palm, as if recognizing something in him. The symbol matched exactly what he'd been seeing in his dreams—the complex circular pattern that looked almost like a cell viewed through a microscope, but with deliberate, angular additions that suggested language.
Later, he brought the map to Roy.
The old hunter was skeptical at first—they had bigger concerns than old family mysteries, with Azazel still out there, still hunting. But when Adam showed him the journal entries about "the Old Blood" and the pendant with its strange symbol, Roy's attitude shifted.
The old hunter held it under the desk lamp, grunting. "This mark here," he said, tapping the pendant's design, "I've only seen once before. Way back. It ain't demonic. It's older."
"Angelic?"
"No," Roy said. "Before that. Old hunter marks. Pre-Enochian. Some say the first hunters used 'em to seal things underground."
Adam watched Roy's expression carefully. The older hunter wasn't easily impressed, but there was something in his eyes now—recognition, maybe even concern.
"You've seen this before?"
Roy hesitated, then nodded. "Once. Bosnia, 1994. Cave system. Was tracking a nest of what I thought were vampires. Turned out to be something... else." He handed the pendant back. "Found markings like this on the walls. The locals wouldn't go near the place. Said it belonged to 'the old ones.'"
Adam flipped open the journal. The pages were yellowed, the handwriting sharp and focused. Elizabeth Milligan wrote like she was reporting for war. References to the Ellwood tunnels, the Black Root, and something she called The Old Blood.
"She writes like a hunter," Adam said. "But not like any hunter I've encountered."
"Different traditions," Roy replied. "Hunting ain't universal. Every culture has its own methods, its own prey." He tapped the journal. "This is old European. Germanic, maybe. Specialized."
Adam thought about his great grandmother's origins—the Black Forest connection he'd discovered in those first photographs. The strange, non-natural trophies mounted on the wall. Had Elizabeth been a hunter? Not just any hunter, but one from a specialized lineage?
And if so, what did that make him?
Roy squinted. "Ellwood. That's that dead logging town thirty miles west, yeah? Place has been abandoned since the sixties."
Adam nodded. "The map leads straight there."
Roy leaned back, crossed his arms, and gave Adam a look like he was trying to decide if this was a terrible idea or just a bad one.
"You really wanna go chasing ghosts in a collapsed tunnel system?"
"These dreams started right after I interfered with Azazel's plan," Adam said. "That can't be coincidence. What if this is connected? What if this... Old Blood... is part of why I've been able to do what I've been doing?"
His unnatural healing. His reflexes. The way his body seemed to know how to fight before his mind did. All those unexplained abilities that had helped him survive the hunting life so far.
What if they came from this—this bloodline that Elizabeth had tried to hide?
Adam looked down at the symbol, then at the journal in his hands.
"She left this for a reason."
Roy sighed and reached for his coat. "Of course she did."
He slung a shotgun over his shoulder.
"No way this is just an old cellar."