I didn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, the alley returned—damp concrete, flickering neon, and that voice sliding through my bones like it belonged there.
Human.
I sat up in bed, gasping, fingers digging into the sheets. Dawn light filtered weakly through the curtains, painting my room in pale gray. Everything looked normal. Too normal.
My heart still burned.
I pressed my palm against my chest.
The sensation hadn't faded overnight. It wasn't pain—not exactly. More like heat trapped beneath the skin, pulsing in a slow, unfamiliar rhythm. As if something inside me had learned how to breathe.
"Get a grip," I muttered to myself.
Hallucinations didn't leave marks. Nightmares didn't linger.
I dragged myself into the bathroom and flicked on the light. The mirror reflected a version of me that looked unchanged—messy hair, dark circles under my eyes, skin pale with exhaustion.
Then I saw it.
Just below my collarbone, faint but unmistakable, lay a mark.
Not a bruise.
Not a scar.
It looked almost like a thin fracture of light beneath my skin, branching delicately outward like veins of silver fire. When I touched it, heat flared, sharp enough to make me hiss and pull my hand away.
"What the hell are you?" I whispered.
The mark pulsed once.
In response.
I staggered back from the mirror, pulse racing. My thoughts spiraled, grasping desperately for rational explanations. Stress. Panic. Some kind of psychosomatic reaction.
But deep down, I already knew.
This was not human.
The rest of the day passed in a haze. I went to work. Answered questions. Smiled when required. No one noticed the way my hands trembled or how every shadow felt too deep, too aware.
I felt watched.
Not in the paranoid sense.
In the way one feels claimed.
By evening, the pressure inside my chest had grown heavier, the heat spreading in slow waves. Each pulse left me slightly breathless, as though my body were responding to a rhythm it remembered but did not understand.
I didn't mean to go back.
But my feet carried me there anyway.
The alley waited, unchanged and unremarkable, as if it had never held something inhuman at all. Trash bins. Cracked pavement. A single flickering light.
I stepped inside.
The air shifted instantly.
It thickened, pressing against my skin. The familiar weight settled over my shoulders like an invisible hand.
"You came," a voice said softly.
I spun around.
He stood where the shadows gathered deepest, arms crossed, expression unreadable. No dramatic entrance. No sound. As if he had always been there, waiting for me to remember how to find him.
"You did this to me," I said, anger finally burning through the fear. "You marked me."
He studied me for a long moment, gaze flicking briefly to my chest before returning to my face.
"Yes," he said.
The simplicity of the admission stunned me.
"You don't even deny it?" I demanded.
"Why would I?" He stepped closer, the air responding instantly, bending around him. "You would have discovered it regardless."
I clenched my fists. "Undo it."
His lips curved faintly—not amused, but intrigued. "That is not possible."
"Then fix it," I snapped. "Take it back. I didn't agree to any of this."
"You did," he replied calmly. "Long before you were capable of understanding consent."
Rage flared hot and reckless. "You don't get to decide that for me."
He stopped an arm's length away. Up close, the wrongness pressed in on every side—his presence too solid, too real, like the world had sharpened around him.
"I do," he said quietly. "Because you are bound."
The word hit harder than any threat.
"Bound to what?" I whispered.
"To me."
The alley seemed to tilt.
My breath hitched as the mark beneath my skin flared painfully, reacting to his proximity. I staggered, and before I could stop myself, I reached out—
His hand closed around my wrist instantly.
The contact sent a shock through me, heat surging from the point of contact straight to my heart. I cried out, knees nearly buckling.
His grip tightened—not enough to hurt, but enough to anchor me.
"Careful," he warned softly. "Your body is still adjusting."
"Let go of me," I gasped.
He didn't.
Instead, his thumb brushed lightly over the inside of my wrist.
The mark answered.
I felt it everywhere—along my spine, behind my eyes, deep in places I had no name for. Not desire. Not fear.
Recognition.
He frowned, just slightly.
"So soon," he murmured.
"So soon for what?" I demanded.
"For you to feel it," he said. "Most take longer."
Tears burned my eyes, frustration and terror tangling together. "You don't get to experiment on me."
His gaze snapped back to mine, sharp now.
"This is not an experiment," he said. "It is a correction."
"Correction of what?"
He hesitated.
For the first time, I sensed restraint—something held back deliberately.
"Of a mistake made centuries ago," he said finally. "One that your existence has… complicated."
He released my wrist.
The absence of his touch was almost as dizzying as the contact had been.
I took a step back, heart pounding. "If I walk away," I said, forcing the words out, "will you let me?"
Silence stretched between us.
His eyes darkened.
"No," he said.
The honesty was terrifying.
"Because you cannot," he continued. "The mark will draw you back. To me. To our world."
"Our world," I repeated weakly.
He leaned closer, voice dropping.
"You stand on the threshold now," he said. "Human enough to fear it. Chosen enough to survive it."
My chest burned hotter than ever.
"And if I refuse?" I asked.
His gaze held mine, unblinking.
"Then it will kill you," he said. "Slowly."
The alley lights flickered.
"And I would very much prefer," he added softly, "that you lived."