The rain had not stopped by morning. It had softened into a fine, drifting mist, too light to be called rain, too persistent to be ignored. It hung over the ground in veils, the kind that blurred the edges of trees and made the world seem slightly out of focus, as though reality itself had not fully woken.
Kaelan stepped outside shortly after first light, his boots sinking into damp earth. The air was cold enough to bite, carrying that sharp, metallic scent of rain-soaked soil. His breath rose in pale plumes.
He had not meant to go anywhere. He had only meant to breathe air that did not feel trapped in the walls of his home. But the moment he stepped outside, the world felt wrong, subtly, quietly, as if the morning held its breath.
The drizzle pattered softly on his shoulders, soaking into his shirt before he even noticed it. He pushed a hand through his unkempt hair and tried to steady himself. He felt wrung out. Hollow. And beneath that hollowness, a low hum he did not understand.
His thoughts drifted, unbidden, unwelcome, to the girl.
Aria.
He had not asked her name, yet it came to him now with the same certainty that the sun would rise, even when hidden behind cloud.
He exhaled sharply, trying to dispel the thought. It clung to him.
He started toward the small shed behind his house, more out of habit than purpose. The path glistened with thin sheets of water. The river was louder this morning, swollen slightly from the rain, rushing against its banks.
But halfway down the path, he stopped.
Not because he wished to, but because something stopped him.
A sound, soft, faint, wrong.
At first he thought it was only the wind shifting through soaked grass. But the air was still. The mist hung too heavy for wind.
He frowned, turning slightly, trying to pinpoint it.
There, again. A whisper of something moving. Not animal. Not human. Something like fabric dragged gently over stone… or like a voice that was not a voice, threads of sound that dissolved the moment he tried to understand them.
He stepped back instinctively.
The hair at the back of his neck rose.
He swallowed.
Who's there? His voice sounded louder than he intended, swallowed oddly by the mist as though it didn't carry far.
Silence answered.
Then, a heartbeat later, the world shuddered.
So slight, so fleeting that he remained unsure if it was the ground itself or only the sensation in his body. A tremor shot through him, sharp and cold, racing up his spine like a warning.
His breath hitched.
Something was coming, no, something had already arrived.
A single crow burst from a nearby branch with a startled caw, wings beating frantically as it vanished into the fog.
Kaelan's pulse tripped.
This was no ordinary morning.
He turned toward the river, toward the bridge without meaning to as though something unseen reached for him, guiding him with a pull he could neither refuse nor fully comprehend.
His heartbeat thudded, heavy and uneven.
He took one step forward, another, but before he could take a third--
A sharp knock broke through the morning stillness.
He froze.
The knock came again, harder this time, urgent at his door.
He spun around, startled, a ripple of unease tightening his chest because he knew by instinct, by the strange stirrings that would not quiet that whoever stood behind that door, was tied to the thing that had awakened inside him during the night and tied, somehow, to her.