The dress clung to her like a secret.
Laced silk, ghost-white, torn at the hem. It fluttered around her legs as she moved—graceful, lethal. Gunfire cracked through the chapel like thunder, echoing off broken stone walls. Shattered pews lay strewn like bodies of another kind, and smoke curled through shafts of light pouring in from the ruptured stained-glass windows.
Vicky didn't flinch.
She moved on instinct, as if her body remembered something her mind refused to recall. One moment she was ducking low, the next—soaring over a man with a drawn pistol. Her heel struck his throat—a precise, brutal note in a deadly symphony. He didn't scream. He simply fell.
Another came at her with a blade, yelling something guttural and foreign. She twisted into the sound, caught his wrist mid-air, snapped it in a clean, merciless arc. The blade clattered to the floor. His body followed.
Three down.
Seven more emerged—tactical, synchronized, trained to kill.
But not trained for her.
She was a force beyond muscle and memory. She moved like an echo of war, like something forged in fire and forgotten by peace. Hands that should have held flowers crushed windpipes. Feet that should have walked down the aisle danced through blood and smoke.
By the time the last body fell, silence returned—too sudden, too complete.
She stood alone in the carnage. Her breath ragged, chest rising and falling beneath the torn bodice. Her hands, red—not her blood. Her eyes scanned the room. Ten bodies. Ten men. And somehow... she had killed them all.
A pistol slipped from her hand. She hadn't even realized she was holding it.
Her heart pounded like a war drum in her chest.
She didn't know how.
Her lips parted, no prayer, no scream—only a whisper that cracked the stillness like glass.
"What the hell just happened?"
And the worst part?
No one was left to answer.
Two Months Earlier…
In a little corner of Windhoek, life moved slower, gentler.
Vicky was a free spirit, the kind of woman who laughed with her whole body and cried in secret. She was a Home Economics graduate from the International University of Management, and the proud owner of a small but beloved restaurant, Sarge—named after her late father. She served fast food with heart, decorated halls for weddings and birthday parties, and organized conferences with the efficiency of a general.
She lived with her younger siblings: Evan, a quiet, deep-souled 17-year-old bookworm attending Windhoek High; and Emily, just 7, a bubbly little artist in the second grade at Hillside Primary in Greenwell. They were her reason to smile—and sometimes the only reason she got out of bed.
Vicky was a genius, yes. But restless. Haunted. Nights were not kind to her. Her dreams came drenched in sweat and smoke—visions of another life, of another self gone rogue. A woman in white, wreathed in blood. A fighter, a killer.
Tonia, her best friend, worked alongside her at Sarge. She had recently shared the kind of news that glows in the dark—she was pregnant. Vicky was thrilled. She loved children, had a way with them that felt almost magical. It wasn't unusual to find her outside with kids, covered in mud or chalk dust, laughing until her sides ached.
She wore gray most days. Not for fashion. For feeling.
"My life's not dark, not light," she once told Tonia. "It's a fog. A mystery I haven't solved."
That morning in Sarge, the restaurant was still quiet. The scent of fried oil and spices lingered in the walls. Vicky had dozed off in the corner of the kitchen, head resting against the counter. But she woke with a start—a gasp tearing from her throat, eyes wide, chest heaving.
She stumbled to the sink and splashed water on her face.
Tonia looked up from a tray of prepped vegetables. "Another nightmare?"
Vicky gripped the counter. Her knuckles pale. "No… I don't know what's wrong with me."
Tonia wiped her hands on her apron and walked over, concern etched deep into her brow.
"You've been having these dreams too often. Maybe it's your stress, or—"
Vicky shook her head. "It's not just dreams, Tonia. It's like…" Her voice trailed off. "Like someone else is living inside me. Someone… dangerous."
Tonia blinked, unsure if it was a metaphor or something more.
Vicky turned toward the window, eyes searching the morning light as if answers lay just beyond the pane.
She had no idea what was coming.
But the storm had already begun.