When the world came back, it was moving.
Fast.
I was in a car or something like one metal rattling, tires screeching against asphalt.
Neon lights flashed past the window in dizzying blurs. The city looked like it was bleeding color.
"Where" My throat burned as I tried to speak.
Elias glanced at me from the driver's seat, one hand gripping the wheel, the other pressed against his ribs. His knuckles were smeared with blood.
"Don't talk," he said quietly. "We're not safe yet."
I turned to look behind us. A dark SUV followed, headlights bright and merciless. For a second, I saw silhouettes inside black coats, masks, and something glinting like a weapon.
"They're still coming!" I shouted.
"I know."
He slammed the steering wheel, swerving sharply into a narrow street. The car barely made the turn before bullets shattered the side mirror.
I ducked instinctively. My pulse pounded so hard it hurt. "Who are they?"
"The kind of people who think souls are property," he said flatly. "And they want yours back."
"What?"
He didn't answer. Just hit the brakes, spun the car sideways, and skidded into a dark alleyway. The engine died.
For a few seconds, there was only silence except for our breathing.
Elias reached over, grabbed a small black bag from under the seat, and pulled out a gun that looked nothing like anything I'd seen before. Sleek, black, and humming faintly with pale blue light.
"Stay here," he ordered.
"No wait"
He was already gone.
The car door slammed shut, and I was left alone, trembling, trying to make sense of anything.
Through the shattered mirror, I saw him move fast, precise, like a shadow that had learned to breathe. The men from the SUV emerged one by one, all armed, all moving like soldiers.
I pressed my hand to my chest. The silver glow beneath my skin pulsed again, faster this time, as if reacting to the danger outside.
Something inside me whispered help him.
My vision flickered. For a heartbeat, I wasn't sitting in the car anymore. I was standing in another place stone walls, torches, screams of war. I saw Elias there too, but dressed in armor, his sword drenched in blood.
He turned to me, eyes burning silver.
"You were never meant to hide, Ariselle. You were meant to fight."
The vision shattered. The car returned. The gunfire outside stopped.
Then silence.
I slowly opened the door and stepped out. Smoke curled through the alley. The SUV was wrecked, bullet holes marking the walls.
Elias stood in the middle of it all, his coat torn, breathing hard, weapon still glowing faintly.
He looked up when he saw me. "I told you to stay."
"I couldn't."
His expression softened for a fraction of a second just before he staggered.
"Elias!" I ran to him, catching him as his knees buckled. Warm blood stained my hands.
"It's nothing," he muttered, but I could see the wound beneath his shirt, deep and burning faint blue.
"That's not nothing!"
He laughed weakly. "You sound like her."
"Who?"
"Ariselle."
My breath caught. He said it so quietly, like he didn't mean for me to hear.
The silver lines under my skin pulsed again, brighter now matching the glow in his wound.
And then, for the first time, I saw it clearly: a mark carved into his collarbone, the same symbol I had seen in my dreams two intersecting circles, one broken.
"What is that?" I whispered.
His eyes flickered up to meet mine. "It's what binds us."
Before I could ask more, a sharp sound echoed behind us. The metallic click of a gun being cocked.
We weren't alone.
I turned slowly toward the sound.
A man stood at the edge of the alley, dressed in black armor that looked too smooth, too modern, yet carved with ancient runes that glowed faintly red. His mask hid everything except his eyes cold, gray, and unblinking.
"Step away from him," the man ordered. His voice was distorted through a modulator, low and inhuman.
Elias raised his gun weakly. "You don't know who you're dealing with."
"Oh, I do," the hunter replied. "Two ghosts wearing borrowed skin."
He lifted a strange weapon that shimmered like liquid metal, aimed it directly at Elias, then shifted it toward me. "And the lost soul that never should have come back."
I froze. The glow beneath my skin pulsed violently now, heat rushing through my veins. The air vibrated around me.
"Don't," Elias warned softly, reaching out. "Not here. Not yet."
The hunter's finger tightened on the trigger.
The hum of the weapon grew sharper, like a scream waiting to be released.
Something inside me snapped.
The air exploded.
A pulse of light burst from my chest, throwing debris into the air and sending the hunter flying backward into the wall. The ground cracked beneath us, splitting the concrete like glass.
I gasped for breath, trembling. The world spun around me, the silver light still pouring from my skin like smoke.
Elias stared at me, shock flickering in his eyes. "Aiden… what did you do?"
"I, I don't know."
The hunter groaned, pushing himself up, blood streaking down his mask. His armor smoked where the light had touched it.
"Impossible," he rasped. "That power died centuries ago."
Elias pulled me behind him, gun raised again. "Guess it didn't stay buried."
The hunter smiled beneath his mask. "Then the legends were true. The knight lives again."
He pressed something on his wrist and vanished.
Gone. Just like that.
The alley fell silent except for my ragged breathing.
Elias dropped his weapon and turned toward me slowly, eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
"You shouldn't have been able to do that."
"I didn't mean to," I whispered. "It just happened."
He stepped closer, so close I could feel the heat radiating from his body. "That kind of power isn't random, Aiden. It responds to one thing."
"What?"
He reached out, brushing his fingers lightly against my cheek. "Me."
The air between us thickened, humming with energy and tension half fear, half something far more dangerous.
I wanted to move, to speak, but his gaze held me there, drowning me in silver and shadow.
Then, almost tenderly, he said, "They'll keep coming. And next time, I might not get to you first."
He turned away, walking toward the end of the alley.
"Elias, wait"
He looked back over his shoulder. "If you want to survive, learn to control it. Because the world just learned you're still alive."
The echo of his footsteps faded into the city night, leaving me alone under the broken lights heart pounding, hands still glowing, and a truth I could no longer deny.
I wasn't supposed to exist.
But now that I did… the whole world would come for me.
To be continued...