AriaMoretti had always known the dark.
Not the kind that came with bedtime stories or flickering lights, but the kind that followed names whispered too carefully and doors that were never opened without checking twice. Being born into the Moretti family meant danger was not an event—it was a constant presence, as familiar as breathing.
Still, even she was not prepared for the night the shadows noticed her.
The city lay unusually quiet as her car pulled to a stop near the old warehouse district. Too quiet. No distant sirens. No drunken laughter. Just silence stretched thin across concrete and steel. Aria stepped out, smoothing her coat as the driver sped away without waiting. He never waited. Not here.
The folder in her hand was light, yet it felt heavier with every step she took. Her father had said nothing when he handed it to her—only that it needed to be delivered quickly and discreetly. She didn't ask questions. She never did. Questions were dangerous in her world.
Her heels echoed sharply as she walked, the sound unnaturally loud in the empty street. The warehouses loomed around her like forgotten giants, windows dark, walls scarred by time. A cold wind brushed past her, slipping beneath her coat and settling against her skin in a way that made her slow.
This cold was wrong.
It wasn't the cold of night air. It felt deliberate, as if the world itself had shifted, tilting slightly out of place.
Aria stopped walking.
The silence deepened, pressing in on her ears until she could hear her own heartbeat—fast, unsteady. Her breath fogged faintly in front of her lips. She told herself she was imagining things, that fear had a way of creating monsters where there were none.
Then the shadows moved.
At first, she thought it was a trick of the light. A ripple where darkness should have remained still. But the movement grew clearer, sharper, as if the shadows were folding inward, gathering themselves.
And then he stepped forward.
He emerged from the darkness without sound, tall and unmoving, dressed entirely in black. The dim streetlight behind him failed to touch his form, as though the darkness clung to him willingly. His presence alone changed the air, made it heavier, colder, impossible to ignore.
Aria's breath caught in her throat.
Her instincts screamed at her to run, to turn back, to do anything except stand there staring at a man who should not exist. Yet her body refused to listen. Her feet remained rooted to the ground, her fingers tightening around the folder as her pulse thundered in her ears.
He looked at her with eyes that were not cruel—but not human either. There was something ancient in them, something that had seen too much and felt too little. Power radiated from him quietly, effortlessly, like a warning the world itself obeyed.
Kael Nocturne had crossed into the human world for reasons that had nothing to do with fate.
He had come for business. For control. For shadows that answered only to him. Humans were fragile creatures, loud and temporary, never worth more than a passing glance.
Until her.
The moment his gaze locked onto Aria, something inside him shifted—subtle, almost imperceptible, yet deeply wrong. He felt it like a fracture spreading through stone. A hesitation.
He should have vanished the instant he saw her. He should have erased her memory, turned away, obeyed the laws written long before her world had ever existed.
Instead, he stayed.
Aria swallowed hard, forcing her voice past the tightness in her chest. "I… I'm just here to drop something off," she said, though she wasn't sure why she felt the need to explain herself to a stranger who felt more like a storm than a man.
Kael did not answer.
His silence frightened her more than words ever could. The shadows around him stirred, curling slightly as if reacting to her voice. He studied her with an intensity that made her feel transparent, as though he could see not just her body, but every fear she had ever learned to hide.
She was human. Soft. Breakable.
And yet, she was standing in front of him without running.
"That place is closed," he said finally. His voice was low, smooth, and carried an edge that sent a shiver down her spine. It sounded like authority, like command, like something that had never been questioned.
"I didn't know," Aria replied quickly. "I can leave."
She took a step back.
The air shifted.
Kael felt it then—an unfamiliar pull, sharp and unwelcome. The idea of her leaving, of her walking back into the darkness unprotected, unsettled him in a way he did not understand. Shadows existed to obey him, not to hesitate alongside him.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, more quietly this time.
Neither of them moved.
The city seemed to hold its breath around them, waiting. Aria felt it then—not fear, not exactly—but something heavier. A sense that her life had just brushed against a boundary it was never meant to cross.
She didn't know his name.She didn't know what he was.
But she knew, with terrifying certainty, that meeting him was not an accident.
And somewhere deep within the darkness that shaped Kael Nocturne, a forbidden truth settled in:
This human girl would ruin him.