The envelope had no return address. That was the first sign.

Lena turned it over twice before sliding her finger beneath the seal. Inside: a single photograph, black and white, printed on paper so old the edges had gone soft. A woman stood in front of a building Lena recognized immediately — the Hartwell Hotel, demolished in 1987, the year before Lena was born.

The woman in the photograph was Lena.

Impossible. She pressed the photo closer to the kitchen light. Same jawline, same narrow shoulders, same small scar beneath the left eye she'd gotten falling off her bicycle at age seven. Her hands were trembling when she flipped the photo over.

On the back, someone had written in neat block letters: YOU WERE WARNED. NOW IT BEGINS AGAIN.

She dropped the photo.

The building across the street — the one she'd been staring at for three years from this exact window — had its lights on for the first time. All of them. Every floor blazing at 2 a.m., and in the top window, a silhouette that didn't move.

Lena's phone buzzed. Unknown number.

She answered before she could stop herself.

"You found the envelope," a man's voice said. Quiet. Certain. Like someone reading a script they'd rehearsed for years. "Good. That means we're already late."

"Who is this?"

"Someone who knows what you are, Ms. Varek." A pause stretched long enough to swallow her heartbeat whole. "And what you did the last time."

The line went dead.

The silhouette in the window across the street raised one hand — slowly, deliberately — and pointed directly at her.

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