Episode 00: Shadows Before the Storm
The night over Castrone City was heavy with rain. Neon lights flickered against puddles. The streets were wet and the colors of the lights mixed like paint.
Alok Fanando sat under the crooked tin roof of a small noodle shop. Steam rose from the bowl before him. He was not in a hurry to eat or leave.
He looked at his reflection in the glass window. He was twenty four years old. His eyes looked sharp and always searching for something. His black hair was messy and his black hoodie made him look like a drifter.
But tonight, something felt wrong.
The streets outside were almost empty. Alok felt like someone was watching him. Not a person, but something else.
It started three days ago. Alok bought an old pendant from a street vendor. It was not valuable. Just a small black gem set in a silver frame shaped like a crescent moon. The vendor was an old man with cloudy eyes. He said, "You cannot choose the pendant. The pendant chooses you."
Alok laughed at that. Now the gem hung around his neck under his hoodie. Sometimes it gave a faint pulse of warmth, like a heartbeat.
When the shop owner went to the back to refill the soup pot, Alok touched the gem.
The world around him stopped.
The rain froze in midair. The sounds of the city disappeared. Colors faded to silver and white.
Then he saw her.
A woman stood in the middle of the road. She was barefoot. Her pale dress was wet from the frozen rain. Her hair was pure white. It moved as if blown by a wind only she could feel. Her eyes were violet. Not human.
She looked at him and smiled.
"You are the one," she said softly. Her voice echoed and felt near and far at the same time.
Alok tried to speak. But no words came.
She stepped closer. Her bare feet made no sound on the wet road.
"You do not belong in that world," she said. "When the time comes, I will bring you to mine."
The frozen world shattered like glass. Sound came back. The shop owner returned with a fresh bowl of noodles as if nothing happened
Alok did not tell anyone. He thought it was stress or tiredness from late nights at work. But in the days after, he kept seeing flashes of her. In the reflection of a bus window. In the corner of a busy train station. In his dreams, standing in a field of silver flowers under two moons.
Each time, her violet eyes pulled him somewhere beyond understanding.
On the fourth night, the rain hammered the city. Alok was in the alley behind his apartment. He saw a shadow move at the far end. It did not walk. It glided.
The pendant on his chest pulsed faster and urgent.
The shadow stopped. Alok thought he saw a hand reaching from it. Long fingers. Too long. Then it vanished.
Far above the city, hidden behind storm clouds, something unseen opened its eyes
That was the night Alok Fanando's fate began to change.