Nyra didn't sleep that night.
Every time she closed her eyes, the street returned—the empty road, the dying lanterns, the way silence had bent around one man's presence.
Kael.
She hated that the name surfaced so easily.
Her room was small, dimly lit by the pale glow of the twin moons outside her window. Familiar walls. Familiar shadows. Yet nothing felt untouched anymore. As if something invisible had crossed the threshold with her.
Anything that stays near me too long… breaks.
His words echoed, low and precise.
Nyra pressed her palms against her ears.
It didn't help.
She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest. Her heartbeat was still uneven, as though her body hadn't realized the danger was over. Or maybe—she thought with a bitter twist—it hadn't wanted it to be.
That scared her more than him ever could.
Across the city, Kael stood alone on the same street she had fled.
The darkness around him writhed faintly, restless, reacting to thoughts he refused to finish. He stared at the place where she had stood, where her fear had tangled with something dangerously close to defiance.
She hadn't screamed.
Hadn't begged.
Hadn't run when she should have.
That was a problem.
Kael turned away sharply.
"This is how it starts," he said to the empty night.
The curse beneath his skin stirred at the memory of her pulse, her breath, the way fate had tightened when their eyes met. It responded to her presence in a way it hadn't in years.
With interest.
Kael clenched his jaw.
No one survived being interesting to the dark for long.
By morning, rumors spread faster than light.
Nyra heard them whispered in the market, murmured behind hands, carried on nervous laughter.
"He was seen again."
"The Shadow King."
"They say the ground froze where he stood."
"They say he never comes without taking something."
Nyra kept her head down.
Every word felt like it was aimed at her.
She didn't know how to explain the heaviness in her chest, the strange awareness that hadn't left her since the night before—as if someone, somewhere, could feel her breathing.
When a chill brushed her spine, she stopped walking.
Slowly, deliberately.
Nothing was there.
Yet the feeling remained.
Marked.
The word rose uninvited.
Nyra exhaled shakily and forced herself to move. She wouldn't let a stranger—no matter how powerful—unravel her life with a single look.
But deep inside, something quieter whispered a truth she wasn't ready to face:
Some encounters didn't end when you walked away.
They waited.
And fate—dark, patient, inevitable—had already begun to close its fingers around her.