I return to my flat before dawn, heart heavy with things I haven't felt in centuries.
I light no candles. Leave the lights off. Sit in the chair beside the window and think of Evelyn.
Not because she's the answer.
Because she might be the trigger.
She shouldn't matter. One girl among millions. But fate is rarely gentle. It doesn't tap politely. It kicks down the door.
And it always starts small.
A conversation. A glance.
A name.
Evelyn.
I press my fingers to my temple. Her voice lingers. Her eyes. That bold, unflinching curiosity. Like she saw something in me and didn't flinch. Didn't run.
That makes her dangerous.
Or worse, important.
I don't want her to be either.
But the past never stays buried. And now, something ancient stirs in the dark.
Something that remembers my name.
At dusk, I go back.
The bookstore is quieter than usual. Fewer bodies. Dimmer light. I wonder, briefly, if I imagined her.
But there she is.
Different coat. Same scarf. A strand of hair tucked behind one ear. She looks up before I make a sound, like she felt me arrive.
"You missed your appointment," she says.
I raise a brow. "Was it scheduled?"
She shrugs. "Most routines are unspoken."
I approach slowly, each step heavier than it should be.
"Mind if I sit?"
She gestures to the chair across from her.
I lower myself onto it, careful. Everything about this moment feels fragile, like glass underfoot.
"You look tired," she says.
"I don't sleep."
Her eyes search mine. "Insomnia?"
"Something like that."
We sit in silence for a moment.
She watches me over the rim of her cup. "You're not like other people."
I don't blink. "No."
"Not just the way you speak, or how you vanish between sentences. You carry yourself like you've seen things. Terrible things."
"I have."
She studies me with unsettling calm. "You ever going to tell me what you are?"
I meet her gaze. The air between us tightens.
"You wouldn't believe me."
"Try me."
I lean forward slightly, voice quiet.
"I'm a man who's made too many mistakes. Buried too many names. Watched too many people fade."
Her lips part. Not with a question. But with something softer.
Understanding.
She doesn't ask more. But she leans back slightly, like she's been here before, on the edge of someone else's grief, unsure whether to cross.
"I used to sit with my uncle when I was young," she says quietly. "He barely spoke. Just watched the fireplace for hours. One night, I asked him why he didn't talk. He said, 'Sometimes the weight of things can't be carried in words.'"
She looks down at her drink, fingers tracing the lid.
"I think about that a lot. How silence can say more than explanations ever could."
It's not just empathy. It's an experience.
She knows how to sit with shadows.
And suddenly I understand why the quiet feels so safe with her.
She doesn't need the whole truth to know it's heavy.
And that silence, that is what hooks me.
Not her beauty.
Not her wit.
But the way she lets me be haunted without demanding an exorcism.
"You ever think about disappearing?" she asks, her voice barely above the hum of the old radiator behind her.
I study her, surprised.
"I mean," she continues, fingers curling around her cup, "just… walking away from everything. Starting over. Somewhere no one knows your name. No one remembers who you were."
I almost laugh. Not because it's funny, but because if she only knew.
"I've done that," I say.
"How many times?"
I hesitate. "Enough to forget who I started as."
She smiles faintly. "Sounds peaceful."
"It's not. Reinventing yourself means burying everything familiar. And the things you bury have a habit of clawing their way back."
"I guess I'm lucky," she says. "No one to bury."
She says it so casually, I almost miss the weight behind it.
"No one?"
She shakes her head, eyes flicking away. "My parents died when I was seventeen. No siblings. A few aunts, a couple of friends. But no one close. Not really."
She stirs the drink that's long since gone cold.
"I think that's why I write," she says. "To give myself people who stay."
I feel the words sink inside me. Deeper than I expected.
She doesn't speak like someone trying to impress. She speaks like someone who's bled her story into silence too many times to perform it anymore.
There's something about her loneliness that mirrors my own, except hers is still soft. It hasn't curdled into something dangerous yet.
"I used to write," I admit.
She looks up sharply. "Really?"
"Letters. Mostly. Stories, sometimes. I burned most of them."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't want to be remembered."
She frowns. "Why not?"
I meet her gaze. "Because memory makes things real."
She goes quiet, fingers tracing the rim of her cup. There's no judgment in her expression. Just thoughtfulness. Curiosity.
After a moment, she asks, "And now?"
"What about now?"
"Do you still want to disappear?"
I should say yes. I should tell her that vanishing is safer. That people like me don't get endings, only pauses. But I look at her, really look, and something in me resists the lie.
"I don't know," I admit.
A smile pulls at her lips. Not smug, soft. Like she's heard something more honest than she expected.
"I'm glad you came back," she says.
"I shouldn't have."
"But you did."
We sit in the silence that follows, both of us knowing that something has changed, even if we haven't named it yet.
Later, I walk her home.
She lives in a small apartment above an old flower shop on a quiet street that smells of rain and ivy. The windows are fogged. The stairs creak. Her door sticks before it opens.
She pauses before stepping inside.
"You want to come up?"
I don't answer right away. Because yes, I want to. But not for the reasons a man would. And I'm not just a man anymore.
I want to understand her. To watch how she lives. To learn what makes her laugh and what she hides between sentences.
But being close to someone like that, someone alive, it's a danger I can't afford.
"I shouldn't," I say.
Her head tilts. "Because you're polite? Or because you're dangerous?"
I look at her for a long time.
"Both."
She doesn't flinch. Doesn't step back. Instead, she nods slowly.
"I figured."
Then she slips inside, leaving the door open behind her for just a moment longer than necessary. Not an invitation. A choice.
I don't take it.
Not tonight.
"Another time."
Back in my apartment, I light a single candle. The flame flickers low, uneasy. There's a chill in the air that doesn't come from the weather.
I feel watched.
Not by her.
By something older.
I move to the small wooden box tucked beneath my floorboards and pry it open with steady hands. Inside are the pieces of the life I've hidden from:
A dagger carved from bone. Its handle worn from centuries of use, meant not to kill, but to bind.
A ring I took from a priest's corpse during a siege, a warding circle engraved in its band. It's never fit any of my fingers, but I keep it anyway.
A coin minted before the continent fractured, stained with blood I never could wash clean.
A letter written in a language no one remembers.
And a name, burned into the inside of the lid:
Kaelthas.
I stare at it for a long time.
He's not just a myth. Not to me.
We crossed paths once, during the fire-rain years. Before the cities. Before names mattered.
He was a devourer. A creature older than death, shaped like a man but hollow where a soul should be. Vampires feared him. Worshipped him, sometimes.
And then… he vanished.
Or so we thought.
If he's returning, if even his name is surfacing again, it means the balance is shifting.
The old world is waking up.
And Evelyn, whatever her part is, she's in the middle of it.
Whether she knows it or not.