o. chapter zero,
fallen witnesses.

' ━━━ waking up felt as though she had
been clawing her way through four empty coffins
to reach her contrite consciousness and regulating
her breathing after rising hadn't been and easier
between the nightmare that was threatening to spill screams from her lips and tip tears from her eyes.

the feeling had been so unfamiliar to her, like a memory that requires a lot of convincing to be deemed real. tangled in the thin covers of her bed she rose with her hair as disheveled as when she used to hunt.

though the delirious fact showed was that four hours prior to her straining seven-forty-six wake-up call was that astoria really had fought her way through four empty coffins, ghosts distributed from their graves and into her apartment living room. four ghosts plaguing the reminder of why she had stopped hunting for the last two months, four ghosts plaguing the reminder of why they had died, and the fight from their rage was strenuous considering her outnumbered and singled stature.

at first astoria believed it was just a dream taking the turn for the worst, her mouth tumbling the words, "you're not real, you're dead." she could see her breath fogging before her and once the first ghost, alicia blythe, a victim by a vampire hunt, managed to land a sharp strike to her left side is when the realization kicked in.

and the useful factor of living in a dated apartment complex was the material of all her radiators and doorknobs she could slam the dead in until she made it to the kitchen utensils; iron.

yet, that didn't send them back down to their barrow and she'd be half out of her mind to stretch across america at three in the morning to find their burial grounds. so complete with frustrations along with the delivered bruises and additional piling guilt she'd been recieving, astoria felt a pulse streak her spine, right from the bottom of the cord up to her mouth as she released a guttural, "get out!" and by a blue light they were gone as if the fire consumed them on a pyre.

though the fourth one didn't fade. astoria knew why; that face worn on the dead wasn't one to forget easy and it was one astoria glowered at. her mother, the only person she never regretted walking out on. the women didn't know anything but commissions.

she spoke through collided teeth, voice broken like she had been emerging through a collision. "you better leave before you make me burn this entire building without a care if i'm in it or not."

the face of her mother never faulted; that same anatomized look like she dissecting your thoughts and feelings in an operating room and replacing them with kevlar. thicker skin to reduce all your worries to cinders.

and the figment left in the three hundred milliseconds it took to blink.

now in the morning and aftermath of her night, astoria felt faulty beyond repair. rubbing the lids of her eyes with a heavy exhale, her stomach feeling as knotted as tree roots, placing her head in her palms.

the ringtone of her phone made astoria flinch but soon disacknowledge how edgy she felt upon answering it to her big brother.

"tori," he immediately responded, sounding brimmed with a relieved sigh. "yeah, what's up?" she asked, voice filled with scratchy morning undertones whilst the sun began to ink through her curtains. "what? did you not get them too last night? the ghosts? other hunters aren't answering — neither are the twins. this wasn't normal tori. i'm worried, man."

his ranting utterance made her head spin. "jesus, slow down. maybe they aren't answering because it's seven-forty-nine in the morning and they dislike us with a golden passion, azza." at the mention of the time, tori yawned, getting out of bed to a course for her kitchen. "wait, for a second i really thought last night was a dream. i had four ghost rolling in my living room like we were all gonna sit down and watch my wife and kids."

"yeah, a few other hunters reached out to me, apparently it's going around and someones ordering it."

she paused, placing the phone between her shoulders and opening the cupboard for her cerial: "what do you mean 'ordering it'? who can yank this many ghosts from their graves to target people in the same night?"

tori could hear how anxious her older brother was down the phone. stress was eminent to those who carry the most. "i don't know, but it's calling the rising witness. tori, this is seriously backward shit, something to do with doors breaking, i don't know."

by the time she made it to her chester sofa, her eyebrows had raised on her forehead. "definitely backward shit going on." azza scoffed loudly. "yeah. did you handle yourself okay? you haven't been hunting in a while?"

"uh, yeah, i just need a break i think but i was fine. haven't lost my touch yet i guess, got rid of them all, but it was weird. mom was there."

azza got quieter down the phone but his contemplation of words was loud enough for astoria to draw her eyebrows in. he sounded like he was treading around land mines. "maybe we should go back to the church. all of us, i mean. we left it really bad last time and it might help us, you know, understand what's going on."

"azza, you know that's not gonna happen. i'm not stepping anywhere near any morteron church and the twins can both bite it. that was the worst argument we've all had — there isn't any coming back from what was said. not now at least."

"come on, tori. we were all ju —."

two knocks on her door dragged astoria's attention away, thankful for the interruption; azza was the overbearing older brother, looking to fix objects, people and situations. "i gotta go, call you later, bye." her departure left no room for him to reply, tearing the phone from her ear and ending the call before you could even say subsequential.

it took astoria a few moments to raise to her feet, as though she was planted there by her own doubt. a few seconds passed for her to come to terms of the presence and set aside her bowl on the coffee table. striding toward her french doors and peering through the glass, her face folded at the man on the other side that she couldn't recall.

he looked uncertain of where he was, green irises darting around the corridor. he appeared considerably young yet she could tell by his face not to mistake it for incorruption. tori reached for the shotgun in her umbrella bucket by the door and aimed the barrel for his cortex.

"who are you?" she questioned with a tone that led connotations of defensiveness. astoria had too many scars littered on her body to not be defensive by this point.

the man seemed to brighten, chiseling a callow expression by his atmosphere with a beamed smile. it didn't reach his eyes though. he looked like his bones were itching his skin; purely uncomfortable but shocked at the time "miss morteron? i — i'm dean winchester, we haven't met formally but a few years ago —"

he rambled, casting confusion down to the girl whilst settling her shotgun down into the umbrella bucket. why did the name sound familiar?

"what the hell are you doing?" an older voice enunciated through her door and down the corner, one she remembered enough to bust the locks open. the slight wind brushed on her thighs where her oversized acdc top couldn't cover.

she looked down the hallway to see an old face submerging by another she hadn't recognized with longer hair. "bobby?"

━━━'