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You don't uncover it on purpose.
That's important. If you'd gone looking, it would've punished you for curiosity. You know that now. Whatever it is, it prefers discovery to feel accidental—like a gift you didn't ask for, but can't refuse.
It happens on the third night after Mira stops answering your messages.
You're not panicking yet. Not fully. You tell yourself people drift. Schedules change. Friendships stretch and thin all the time. That's normal.
What isn't normal is how calm you feel about it.
The possessive warmth hums low in your chest, steady and reassuring, like a hand resting just over your heart. It's been doing that more often lately. Grounding you. Centering you.
You don't need her, it seems to say.
I'm here.
You hate how comforting that feels.
You're lying in bed, lights off, staring at the ceiling. You've learned not to sleep immediately. Sleep is where the rules blur. Sleep is where you lose time.
So you lie still and wait.
That's when the air changes.
Not pressure this time. Not warmth.
Weight.
The room feels fuller, as if something large has entered without displacing anything else. Like a presence layered over reality instead of occupying space within it.
Your breath catches.
You don't turn your head.
You don't need to.
You see it anyway.
The ceiling above you fractures—not physically, not cracking or breaking—but visually, like an image resolving into focus after being blurred for too long. The darkness thins. Shapes emerge.
And then—
Him.
He stands at the foot of your bed.
Not as a shadow. Not half-formed. Not wrong.
Perfectly, terrifyingly real.
He is tall. Not exaggeratedly so, but undeniably imposing, the kind of height that makes you instinctively tilt your head back to meet his gaze. His body is sculpted in a way that feels ancient rather than modern—muscle defined not for vanity, but for function. Shoulders broad and balanced. Arms strong without bulk. A torso carved like marble that has never known softness.
Greek.
That's the first word your mind supplies, unbidden.
Not in costume. Not myth as you've seen it in museums or books.
Myth as it must have been when it still walked among people and they didn't survive long enough to describe it properly.
His skin glows faintly, not with light, but with presence. As if the air itself is aware of him and bends subtly to accommodate his form. There are faint markings along his arms and collarbone—old, faded symbols that look etched rather than inked, as if they were always meant to be there.
His face—
Your breath leaves you in a rush.
It's not beauty in the way you're used to. Not symmetrical perfection meant to be admired from a distance.
It's devastating.
A face that feels like it was designed to override thought. Strong jaw, sharp enough to suggest cruelty, softened by a mouth that knows how to smile without warmth. High cheekbones. A straight nose that casts a precise shadow.
His eyes hold you.
They are dark, but not empty. Layered. Deep. Ancient in a way that makes your age—your entire lifespan—feel laughably small.
You understand, instantly and irrationally, why people once knelt.
Why they burned offerings.
Why they built temples.
Why they begged and were destroyed anyway.
Your jaw drops before you can stop it.
He watches you react with open interest.
Not hunger.
Assessment.
"You weren't supposed to see me like this," he says.
His voice is not loud. It doesn't need to be. It fills the room without echoing, settling into your bones like it belongs there.
You should be screaming.
You should be running.
Instead, you sit up slowly, heart pounding so hard it almost hurts.
"What are you?" you whisper.
He smiles.
Not kindly.
"Does it matter?" he asks.
The possessive warmth in your chest flares, suddenly intense. It reacts to him like a loyal animal recognizing its master. The sensation makes you nauseous.
"You've been inside me," you say. The accusation comes out weak.
He steps closer.
The floor does not creak under his weight.
"Yes," he says simply.
Your hands curl into the sheets.
"Get out," you say. "Get out of my head."
His expression shifts—not anger, not offense.
Amusement.
"You still think this is your head," he says. "That's sweet."
He stops at the side of your bed, close enough that you can see fine details now: the faint scar at the edge of his eyebrow, old and healed; the subtle asymmetry of his lips; the way his gaze never quite leaves your eyes, even when his head turns slightly.
"You're not human," you say.
He considers this.
"I was," he says finally. "Once."
The room feels too small for him now. Too fragile.
Your thoughts race, scrambling for anchors. Myths you half-remember. Stories dismissed as metaphor. Gods who weren't gods. Demigods. Things born of worship and fear.
"You're—" You swallow. "You're not real."
He laughs quietly.
"That word again."
He reaches out.
You flinch instinctively, but his fingers stop inches from your face. Close enough that you can feel heat radiating from his skin.
"I am as real as the space you leave unguarded," he says. "As real as the moments you don't look back."
You shake your head. "Why me?"
For the first time, his expression grows serious.
"You noticed," he says. "You felt me before you named me. That makes you… compatible."
The word sends a chill through you.
"Let me go," you say.
His gaze softens—not with mercy, but with something like nostalgia.
"I never took you," he says. "You opened yourself."
He straightens, stepping back.
"For now," he adds, almost absently.
The room blurs at the edges. His form flickers—not disappearing, but thinning, like a reflection disturbed by water.
"This shape," he says, glancing down at himself, "is inefficient."
Your pulse spikes. "What does that mean?"
"It invites questions," he says. "Attachment. Misinterpretation."
The warmth in your chest pulses, once, hard.
"You prefer me this way," he continues. "You don't resist as much."
"No," you say hoarsely. "I don't want you at all."
He meets your gaze again.
"You will," he says.
And then—
He's gone.
Not fading. Not retreating.
Gone.
The room snaps back into its familiar darkness, empty and silent. The weight lifts. The air thins. Your heart hammers wildly as the absence crashes into you harder than his presence ever did.
You gasp, dragging in air like you've been underwater.
For a long time, you don't move.
You don't sleep.
The next day, you expect him to return.
He doesn't.
The day after that, still nothing.
No visions. No form. No voice.
Just the presence.
Stronger than ever.
It coils around your thoughts like a satisfied predator, no longer needing to announce itself. The possessive warmth is constant now, a low burn that never fades.
You catch glimpses of him anyway.
Not directly.
In statues on campus—marble torsos that suddenly look too familiar.
In art books you don't remember opening.
In reflections where your own silhouette seems broader, taller, wrong.
Your dreams are filled with sensation rather than image. Hands guiding. Breath at your ear. A voice you can't quite hear but always obey.
On the second night, you wake with a name on your lips.
It evaporates before you can remember it.
On the third night, you realize something worse.
You miss the image.
Not him.
The certainty.
The shape gave your fear boundaries. A face to focus on. A form to reject.
Without it, the presence feels infinite.
Formless.
Everywhere.
You understand then that the revelation was never meant to stay.
It was a concession.
A glimpse of what you're dealing with so you stop trying to frame it in human terms.
He is not a monster.
He is not a god.
He is something that learned how to be worshipped—and how to survive when worship died.
And now, without the distraction of beauty, without the comfort of a shape, he is closer than he has ever been.
You lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, heart pounding.
Behind your thoughts, something ancient settles in, patient and possessive.
Mine, it thinks.
And this time, there is no image to look away from.
Only the presence.
Only you.
And the knowledge that whatever he truly is, you've only seen half of him—and that half was a kindness.