Fate.
The word clung to my skin.
Cold.
Closer than the night air pressing against my throat.
I should have laughed.
Should have told him how absurd he sounded.
Men in our village spoke of crops and weather, not fate.
But the mark on my wrist pulsed.
A sharp, living heat.
It climbed my arm in stinging waves.
It answered him.
Answered his presence.
His voice.
His claim.
I clenched my jaw.
"I do not believe in fate."
His smile curved slowly, like something old waking up after a long sleep.
His eyes never left my face.
"You will."
The wind surged through the narrow lane.
It howled between stone and shadow, carrying a scent that did not belong to our fields or cooking fires.
Iron.
Smoke.
Something scorched and wrong, like offerings burned on an altar that had been forgotten.
The mist thickened.
It crept low, coiling around my ankles like fingers testing bone.
The ground beneath my feet felt damp and cold, packed earth slick with dew.
Then I saw it.
The darkness behind him moved.
Not the way shadows should.
They bent.
Twisted.
Reached.
Black tendrils slid along the walls, breathing, alive—drawn to him as if he were their heart.
My breath hitched.
My hand pressed tighter over my wrist.
"Speak my name."
His voice did not rise.
Yet it pressed into the air.
Heavy.
Close.
Like a hand at my throat.
"I do not know your name."
My words sounded thin against the wind.
My pulse thudded wildly, betraying me.
His silver eyes gleamed.
Cold.
Certain.
"Yes, you do."
That was the true terror.
Because somewhere beneath thought, beneath fear, beneath the life I knew in this small village, I did.
The name lived in my bones.
In the marrow.
A sound etched into me long before memory.
The wind roared louder.
The lane dimmed.
Colors bled away from stone, from mist, from sky, until the world narrowed.
Just him.
Just me.
My body shuddered.
My lips parted before my will caught up.
The name slipped free.
Unstoppable.
"Raviel."
The world lurched.
The mark on my wrist flared white-hot.
Pain exploded through my arm like it had been split open from the inside.
My knees buckled.
I staggered forward—
—and he caught me.
His arms closed around me.
Iron and fire.
His heat was unnatural, searing through cloth and skin.
My fingers clutched at his coat without thinking, the fabric rough beneath my nails as my vision blurred.
Agony lanced from my wrist up to my shoulder.
I gasped.
"What is happening?"
"You spoke my name."
His voice dropped, low, almost gentle.
"There is no flight left to you now."
I tore myself from him, stumbling back until my shoulder hit stone.
"That is not how this works."
His gaze darkened.
The silver dulled to something deeper.
Older.
"You still do not understand."
A tremor slid through me.
"Then explain it."
His jaw tightened.
The muscles there worked once, as if he were swallowing words that wanted to come out sharper.
For the first time, something else surfaced in his expression.
Restraint.
Like a beast held by chains it did not need.
"I have walked centuries to find you," Raviel said.
Each word landed with weight.
"You were mine before this flesh.
Before this name.
In every turning of the world, you return."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
The village, my mother, the fields and familiar paths—all of it felt suddenly small and distant.
"No."
"Yes."
"I do not remember you."
A flicker crossed his eyes.
A brief crack in that endless certainty.
Gone before I could read it.
"You will."
The mark throbbed again.
I pressed my palm over it, rubbing hard as if I could smother the truth burning there.
"This is impossible."
My voice shook despite myself.
The girl who fetched water and fed chickens could not be what he was talking about.
"What, then, do you believe is happening, little one?"
My throat tightened.
"You are lying."
His mouth curved.
No warmth touched it.
"Shall I prove otherwise?"
He moved.
I did not see it happen.
One moment there was space between us—
The next, his fingers brushed my temple.
Barely there.
The world shattered.
Fire.
Blood.
Screams swallowed by thick smoke.
A woman stood before a throne of shadows.
She had my face.
Older.
Harder.
Eyes burning with defiance and grief.
Raviel sat upon the throne.
Not as he was now.
Darker.
Heavier.
His presence crushed the air.
Cruelty gleamed in his silver gaze like a crown.
The woman raised a dagger.
Her hand shook.
And I felt it.
Not as a stranger.
As myself.
Her hatred was a lie.
She did not want to kill him.
She wanted to save him.
The blade fell—
and she failed.
I tore back into myself with a broken gasp.
My body jerked away from his touch.
My lungs burned.
My chest ached with something sharp and wrong, as if the wound from that other life had never healed.
Raviel watched me.
Still.
Waiting.
"That was not real," I whispered.
My voice sounded hoarse, scraped raw.
His head tilted slightly.
The mist clung to the edges of his coat, curling like it belonged to him.
"Was it not?"
My stomach twisted.
The vision clung to me.
Heavy.
Intimate.
Too detailed to be a lie.
Worse—the grief in my chest did not feel new.
It felt remembered.
I shook my head hard.
"No."
His voice came quieter now.
Final.
"This time, I will not lose you."
A promise.
A threat.
I turned and ran.
But I did not get far.
The shadows surged.
Dark tendrils coiled around my ankles, yanking me to a halt.
Fear slammed through me.
Cold.
Absolute.
They were not shadows.
They were his.
They slid from his coat.
From the walls.
From the night itself.
Wrapping around my legs.
My waist.
My wrists.
Holding.
Claiming.
To make me remember.
To make me his.