Chapter one
The rain didn't just fall that night — it wept, as if the sky itself knew the pain I carried.
I was running, barefoot, heart pounding, my breath sharp like broken glass. Behind me, the shadows of the past chased me, memories I swore I could never outrun.
That's when I saw him.
A stranger, standing under the flicker of a streetlight, his dark eyes following me as though he had been waiting. I should have been afraid. But something in his gaze made my steps falter.
"Are you alright?" he asked, his voice calm but heavy, like someone who knew storms well.
And in that moment — drenched, trembling, and lost — I thought maybe fate had given me a safe place to land.
I didn't know it then, but the man who saved me that night was the same man whose name my family had cursed until their last breath.
The same man who had ruined everything I once loved.
I didn't sleep that night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face — the stranger under the rain.
By morning, I almost convinced myself it was just a dream. But fate, it seems, was determined to keep proving me wrong.
I found him again.
Or maybe… he found me.
It was at the old library café, a quiet corner of the city where I usually went to escape the noise of the world. And there he was, sitting by the window, a book in his hands, the storm outside reflected in his eyes.
"Eleanor Daniels," he said before I could even introduce myself.
I froze. How did he know my name?
"I heard it last night," he explained, as though reading my thoughts. "You whispered it… before you collapsed."
My cheeks burned. Embarrassment. Curiosity. Fear. Everything at once.
"Kael," he said simply, offering his hand.
Kael Joshua.
His grip was firm, steady — too steady for a man who felt like a stranger, yet somehow not.
We spoke for hours, about books, about dreams, about everything and nothing. For the first time in years, I laughed without forcing myself.
But when he thought I wasn't looking, I caught the flicker in his eyes. A shadow.
Like he carried a secret too heavy for his soul.
And I should have walked away then.
But I didn't.
Because something in me already knew—Kael wasn't just a passing storm.
He was the lightning destined to set my world on fire.