CHAPTER 1
The Woman Who Sees Too Much
Celestine Nari knew the exact moment the vision would hit her.
It was always the same:
the faint electric prickle beneath her skin,
the whisper of a future she didn't want,
the cold slide of fate wrapping like a chain around her wrist.
But this time, she wasn't touching anyone.
She was alone.
The market street around her buzzed with late-afternoon life and vendors calling out prices, children weaving between stands, young lovers laughing with their fingers intertwined. Celestine walked through it like a ghost wrapped in a human body. She didn't look at anyone long enough to spark curiosity. She didn't linger near crowds. The leather gloves she wore in the sweltering heat marked her as odd, but she had long accepted oddness as a survival tool.
Her abilityand her curse did not require permission.
It required only contact.
A brush of a hand.
A bump of a shoulder.
A simple graze of skin.
One second of accidental touch could send her collapsing to the ground, tortured by visions of a stranger's future. Death. Betrayal. Pain. Love. Loss. All the things people shouldn't know ahead of time.
And because of that, she lived like a shadow.
But shadows could not outrun fate.
Not today.
The prickle grew sharper.
Fate tightened.
Her breath hitched.
"No," she whispered, gripping her bag strap.
People rushed around her, unaware that the quiet woman in black gloves was fighting a storm.
The vision struck.
Not with the usual fragmented flashes.
Not with the blurry glimpses of someone she accidentally brushed.
This vision was crystal.
Heavy.
Personal.
A man's silhouette appeared,so tall and intimidating, standing at the edge of a skyscraper balcony with the city spread beneath him like a kingdom he owned. He held a glass in his hand, untouched. His eyes were storm-dark, heavy with a loneliness Celestine recognized too easily.
She didn't know him.
She had never touched him.
Yet she saw his future.
And it was ending.
A sharp gunshot cracked through the vision.
The man jerked forward, collapsing.
Blood spread across marble.
The skyline blurred into red.
Celestine gasped and stumbled against a wall, palms flat, fingers shaking inside her gloves. People walked by, oblivious. No one ever noticed when she broke.
Her visions never lied.
Not once.
Not ever.
The man in the vision,whoever he was would die soon
She dragged in a breath, trying to steady her pulse. Visions were common for her but this,this was different.
She had seen his death before she had ever touched him.
Impossible.
Her curse didn't work like that.
Something was wrong.
Something was shifting.
Celestine squeezed her eyes shut, trying to clear the lingering echo of the gunshot. She needed air. Space. Silence. Anything to drown the growing dread in her spine.
But dread didn't drown.
It sharpened.
Because through the fading vision, she saw something else,something chilling:
A name,Kade Varyn,her breath froze.
Kade Varyn,the billionaire.
CEO of Varyn Enterprise.
Cold-eyed, unreachable, powerful beyond reason.
A man who lived in the highest tower in the city and ruled half its economy with strategic brutality.
She had read about him in newspapers.
He was untouchable.
Unapproachable.
And in thirty days, he would be dead.
Celestine pressed her glove against her forehead, whispering to herself, "Stay out of it. Stay out of his life. You don't get involved. You don't change things anymore."
Her hands trembled.
But visions didn't care about her boundaries.
Destiny didn't ask her permission.
And fate had just chosen a billionaire.
Across the city, inside a penthouse of glass and steel, Kade Varyn stood at his window, unaware that his life had just been witnessed by a stranger.
He held the latest envelope between his fingers.
Another anonymous prediction.
Accurate.
Impossibly accurate.
"Who are you?" he muttered.
But Celestine Nari, the woman running from fate, was already slipping into the crowd, desperate to disappear.
She didn't know Kade was already searching for her.
Already obsessed with the invisible person who knew too much.
And soon, their worlds would collide with danger, with prophecy, with a love neither of them wanted but neither of them could escape.