POV: Bela Talbot
I knew who they were.
Long before they turned the corner in that crooked Savannah alley and changed everything.
Before the crash of cans.
Before the bickering.
Before Dean Winchester looked at me like I might detonate.
I'd known their names since I woke up in this world.
Since I died. Since the Void remade me. Since this universe—this series I once devoured from the safety of a screen—became my reality.
I knew them. On paper. On wiki pages. In lore.
But nothing prepared me for what it would feel like to actually see them.
To feel something shift—not fate, not magic—me.
I had gone out alone that morning, as I often did.
Maggie and Don trusted me. They knew I was more than capable, more than prepared. They also knew Savannah suited me: a city steeped in history and hauntings, where the air hums like a séance in slow motion.
The moss-draped trees and fractured bricks whispered. My footsteps barely echoed.
I wasn't expecting anything.
Least of all them.
I returned to our hotel different.
I didn't say anything at first. I didn't need to.
"Your aura is unsettled," Maggie said later that evening. Her fingers trailed through my hair, gentle as mist. "What happened?"
"I met them," I said.
"The Winchesters," Don said from across the room, not bothering to feign surprise.
My parents were many things—ancient, powerful, mysterious. But never unprepared.
They already knew.
Of course they did.
By the next morning, a file sat at my breakfast place.
Neatly compiled.
Stamped in a crimson seal.
Sam and Dean Winchester.
Sons of John and Mary Winchester.
Born of blood and war.
I read the names I already knew, but this time… they weighed more.
I closed the file.
"They felt… familiar," I murmured.
Don set down his tea. "You knew who they were."
"Yes," I replied, tracing the rim of my cup. "But knowing and feeling aren't the same thing."
The pull wasn't rational.
It wasn't spiritual.
It was cosmic—like the Void inside me recognized something ancient in them.
Not love. Not even longing.
A gravity.
And that terrified me more than anything else.
Because I had designed my life to be detached.
To control. To observe. To ascend.
And suddenly, two boys from a prophecy I didn't believe in anymore had the audacity to pull me in.
"Your eyes are stormy," Maggie said, slipping on a sapphire ring that glowed faintly in the low light. "That only happens when you're scared."
"I'm not scared."
She turned. Smiled softly. "Then you're lying."
I waited until midnight to cast the spell.
Just a thread. A whisper of my magic—like a spider laying silk between dimensions. A way to watch, to protect, to feel when they moved through the world.
Not to interfere.
Not yet.
The spell pushed back.
Not because it was flawed.
But because something else was watching them already.
The energy recoiled and snapped, not violently—but firmly. Like a ward not meant to keep me out, but to remind me:
You are not the only one playing this game.
It didn't feel like God. Or Death. Or even Azazel.
It felt like fate itself had curled around them and decided to keep me at arm's length.
I drew back the thread. Rewove the spell more delicately. Anchored it to feelings, not locations. Memory, not presence.
And I sat by the window for hours, watching the candlelight flicker across their names written in my journal.
Dean Winchester.
Everything about him was tension: shoulders wound like springs, jaw set, gaze sharp.
Even at fourteen, he looked like a soldier in a borrowed childhood.
His voice had scraped my skin when he spoke—dry, clipped, borderline distrustful.
And yet he had taken the can from my hand like he didn't know how not to.
Sam Winchester was light.
Not innocent. No one in this world stays that for long.
But curious. Still believing there was something worth trusting in others.
His smile hadn't been cautious.
It had been hopeful.
And somehow, that hurt.
I traced the letters of their names again.
I had drawn them from memory—charcoal on the ivory parchment of my grimoire.
They looked almost right. But never quite.
You can't draw presence.
You can't sketch a feeling.
The Void inside me stirred—restless.
It didn't speak, not in words. But it had moods. Fluctuations. Emotional signatures that pulsed through my spine when the world shifted in subtle ways.
And it liked them.
No—worse.
It responded to them.
That made me furious.
I wasn't someone who chased. I wasn't someone who followed.
I was followed.
Respected. Obeyed.
Feared.
But that alley… it shook me.
Not in weakness.
In recognition.
They were no longer characters. No longer plot devices in a story I once adored.
They were real.
And worse…
They were theirs.
Don found me the next morning in the courtyard.
I was barefoot in the grass, eyes closed, hovering half an inch off the ground.
"The thread settled," he said.
"It did," I replied.
"They're gone."
"I know."
He was quiet for a moment, then asked the question he always asks when he already knows the answer:
"Are you done with them?"
"No," I said. "I'm not."
I turned and faced him.
"I want to protect them," I said plainly.
He studied me. "Because of what they'll become?"
"Because of what they are," I replied. "And because I'm not sure anyone else ever truly will."
That afternoon, I began crafting small wards—spells tied to their names, not their beings. Quiet, passive things. They wouldn't protect them from death. But they might slow it. They might buy seconds in a moment that demanded them.
I didn't owe them that.
But something inside me did.
Beth entered the observatory that night with a question in her eyes.
I waved her over.
She sat beside me on the carpet, knees pulled up, bare feet tucked beneath her.
"You're glowing," she said.
"Am I?"
"Yes."
"Good."
A pause.
"Who are they?" she asked softly.
I didn't answer.
I didn't need to.
She reached out, brushing a finger across the page in my lap.
"They make you feel alive."
"They make me feel seen."
And for a girl reborn of death and silence, sometimes that's worse.
Final Page of the Chapter – Grimoire Entry
Sam and Dean Winchester
I knew you before I met you.
I studied your tragedies, your legends, your legacy.
But I didn't expect to feel you.
To care.
This is not love.
Not yet.
But something has begun.
And I don't know how to stop it.
—B.T.