The nightmares were different now.
No longer trenches or shrapnel or faces broken by bullets.
Now it was fire.
Wagons burning.
Women screaming in Romani tongues.
And a great black wolf—eyes glowing gold—watching James from the ridge as the sky burned.
He'd wake in cold sweat, fists clenched, heart pounding.
And for the first time in his life, he couldn't tell if it was a dream... or a memory.
He started hearing things.
Not voices.
Whispers.
Soft ones. Faint. Barely there—just on the edge of reality.
Sometimes they came when he walked through the markets.
Sometimes when he passed by old fires.
But always in Romani.
Always in her voice.
"Remember the breath, my son. Remember the bones."
He didn't tell Tommy.
Didn't tell Polly either—not until the night he disappeared.
One minute he was drinking with Arthur and Curly, laughing loud under lantern light.
The next—he was gone.
Polly found him just past midnight, kneeling in the woods outside the city, surrounded by crows.
They circled him like a crown of black feathers, landing and lifting from his shoulders without fear.
He wasn't speaking.
He was listening.
When she stepped forward, he spoke—not to her, but to the dark.
"She's calling."
Polly's skin went cold.
"Who?"
James's voice was low. Unnatural.
"The one who bled stars into my chest. The one who gave me the fire."
He looked up, eyes shining faint gold under the moon.
Polly stepped back.
And whispered, "Isidora."
Later, in the cellar beneath the betting shop, Polly took out an old box. Wooden. Carved with Romani runes.
"Your mother left this with me," she said. "Said you'd come for it when you were no longer afraid of the things inside you."
James opened the box.
Inside: charms, runes, and a small scroll of black paper sealed with red wax.
When he broke the seal, something inside him clicked.
A flood.
Not of knowledge—but of instinct.
Memories not his, but still his.
Fire dances.
Blood rites.
The rhythm of earth beneath skin.
That night, James walked the rooftops of Birmingham with a new sense.
He no longer needed sight to feel a heartbeat through brick.
He could smell gunpowder before it was lit.
He could taste lies on a man's breath.
And if he closed his eyes—
He could see.
Not with vision.
But with spirit.
An overlay of the world in heat and memory.
In this new sight, Campbell appeared to him as a blight.
Dark. Hollow. Poisoned.
And something else too.
Fearful.
Because Campbell had touched something ancient, but didn't understand it.
He had cracked open a door into a world of spirits and forgotten bloodlines—and James was the one walking through it now.
In the following days, James started using this gift subtly.
Finding weapons stashed behind false walls.
Reading a man's guilt by how the crows gathered near him.
Knowing the exact second someone lied to Tommy.
Polly watched him.
Watched the way firelight curved around him unnaturally.
Watched how he no longer flinched from violence—but anticipated it, like it spoke to him before it happened.
One night, she whispered to herself:
"He's not just a soldier anymore."
He was something else.
A blood-mage in a world of steel and whiskey.
The last of a forgotten lineage that lived between wars.
But James kept it quiet.
Because he knew the truth.
These gifts were not without cost.
And whatever was awakening inside him…
Was not finished.
Not even close.
The wolf in his dreams had not spoken yet.
It had only watched.
And it was still watching.
Waiting.
Because James Shelby wasn't just chosen by war…
He had been claimed by something older than God.