Jade didn't move.
Her breath came shallow, and her pulse thundered in her ears. The figure beneath the streetlamp remained motionless, face hidden beneath a dark hood, long coat trailing like smoke. The kind of stillness that wasn't human. Like it was waiting.
She blinked once—and the figure was gone.
Gone, like it had never been there at all.
She stumbled back from the window, yanking the curtains shut with shaking hands. Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text.
KAEL:
Don't open the window. Don't let them see you.
Her mouth went dry.
She stared at the screen, fingers frozen.
How did he know?
The three little dots blinked. Another message came through.
KAEL:
I'm coming. Stay inside.
It was nearly two in the morning when Kael arrived.
Jade cracked her bedroom window just wide enough to let him slip through. He moved silently, like he'd done it before—like sneaking into people's bedrooms was second nature. His black hoodie was damp with night mist, his eyes even darker than usual.
"You saw it," she whispered, stepping back. "The thing outside?"
Kael nodded. "A Shadowborn. One of the lesser ones."
"Lesser?" Her voice rose, panic threatening to break loose. "That thing didn't look lesser. It looked like it wanted to eat my soul!"
"You're not wrong," he said grimly, scanning the room like he expected more of them to pour through the walls. "They feed on energy—light, hope, memory. They don't just kill. They erase."
Jade sat on the edge of her bed, the floor feeling too far away. "Why me?"
Kael looked at her, expression unreadable. "Because something in you is waking up. Something they were told to destroy."
She swallowed. "What is it? What's waking up?"
He hesitated—too long. Then he crouched in front of her, lowering his voice.
"Your dreams weren't just dreams. That place you see with the stars—that's real. It's called the Aether. It's the space between this world and the next. The fact that you can see it means you're not just human."
The room tilted.
"Excuse me?" she said.
"You're what we call Starborn," Kael said. "You come from a bloodline that carries light inside it—literal starlight. You can see the Aether, move through it, even bend it if you awaken fully."
Jade blinked. "I'm… glowing alien royalty now?"
"Not alien," Kael said softly. "Celestial. And it's not a crown. It's a target."