POV: RenLocation: Astraea's Room — Late Night
I opened the door without knocking.
She was curled up under the blanket, the lamp beside her casting golden light across her silver hair. Her eyes were open. She had been waiting.
No surprise. She always knew when I would come.
"Couldn't sleep?" she asked softly, voice thinner than usual.
I didn't answer. I simply stepped in, closing the door behind me.
She didn't move, but lifted the blanket slightly.
"Then just stay," she whispered. "I don't need anything else. Just... warmth."
Warmth.
That word again.
What they all ask for.
And what I can never give.
Still, I crossed the room and lay beside her.
She pressed her body against mine immediately—her arms looping around my chest, her cheek resting on my collarbone. Her fingers clung like a child's, but the ache in them belonged to something much older.
And I let her.
I let her take what she needed from my stillness. My body. My breath. My presence.
The only things I ever truly offer.
"Do you ever wonder," she asked after a long silence, "what we were before this?"
I said nothing.
"I do. I wonder if I was really yours. Or if I just wanted to be."
Her voice cracked, but only slightly.
"I think I fell in love with a mask, didn't I?"
I turned my head slightly, watching the ceiling.
"Yes," I said.
She went quiet.
I felt her body tense.
And then, slowly—resignedly—she nodded against my chest.
"But the worst part is," she murmured, "even knowing that, I still want that mask."
Her words drifted into the darkness like incense smoke. Tragic and sweet.
She was right.
What she loved was just a shape.
She didn't know.
That even before her, I had walked worlds.
That I had worn faces in a thousand skies, tasted stars under names long forgotten.
I was not born in this universe.
I simply arrived here.
By accident.
Or fate.
Or the whisper of a girl who once said to me, in a moment of light and fire:
"Run."
And I did.
I ran so fast the world tore at the seams.
And through that tear, I fell.
Into dimension after dimension.
Until I became what they now call me.
The Worldwalker.
But even that name is just another illusion.
Because the truth is far worse:
I don't know why it happened.I don't know who she was.I don't even remember my own name from before.
Only the feeling remains.Of running.Of escape.Of a power that wasn't awakened—but unleashed.
Not out of purpose.Not out of fear.Not for love.
But because I didn't care.
I never did.
And it doesn't matter.
"You're so quiet," Astraea whispered again, pulling the blanket closer.
I looked at her.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, but steady. Still reaching. Still trying.
"I want the truth," she said, "even if it's painful."
I stroked a strand of her hair away from her cheek.
"There is no truth," I murmured. "Just masks we never take off."
She closed her eyes. Her grip on me tightened.
"Then lie to me better," she whispered.
I said nothing.
I simply held her.
She fell asleep in my arms.
And I watched the ceiling for hours, remembering the fire and the scream and the girl I never knew—
The girl who made me more than human.
But never truly alive.
POV: AstraeaLocation: Ren's House – Her Room – Morning
The light filtered softly through pale curtains, painting thin gold lines across the ceiling.
I stirred beneath the blanket, the warmth fading quickly from where my body had curled. My hand brushed the side of the bed—cool, undisturbed.
He hadn't come.
Or if he had, he left before I noticed.
I sat up, brushing my hair back. The room smelled faintly of fabric softener and new wood. Clean. Sterile. Too quiet.
The walls were still bare. The drawers still mostly empty.
I was here.
But I hadn't settled in.
Not really.
On the small desk beside the window, my tablet blinked. A soft pulse, as if trying to breathe.
I hadn't left it on.
Frowning, I padded over barefoot and tapped the screen.
Unlocked.
No security code. That was odd.
Ren would never—
Then I saw it.
A single message glowed in the center of the screen.
Not a notification. Not a system prompt.
Just a short line, sitting still in the middle like it had always been there.
"You don't need to understand everything to be part of it."
No sender. No timestamp.
Just… that.
I stared for a moment.
Then again.
And again.
I sat down at the desk, the blanket slipping from my shoulders.
It was his style—precise, quiet, impossible to trace. A line that said everything and nothing at once.
He wasn't trying to explain.
He was setting a boundary.
No questions.
No answers.
Only roles.
I leaned back in the chair and looked toward the ceiling.
So this was how it was going to be.
Living in the same house. Sharing the same silence.
And playing a part in something I didn't fully understand.
Not yet.
But I would.
Eventually.
Outside, I heard the muffled clatter of breakfast. The voices of his parents. Dishes, laughter. The illusion of normalcy.
I stood, pulled on my jacket, and opened the door.
The morning felt distant.
But I was here now.
And I'd stay close.
Even if he never told me why.