The street was dead quiet. Too quiet.
The Watcher's ashes were still drifting, curling in the air like burnt paper. Eli sat on the curb, arms limp over his knees, sweat dripping down his face. Every nerve in his body screamed, but his brain? His brain was still trying to figure out how the hell he wasn't already in a morgue again.
Sara leaned against a cracked wall, blade resting across her lap. Blood smeared her jaw, but her breathing was steady—like this was just another Tuesday night.
"You should've stayed down," she muttered, eyes fixed on him.
Eli let out a shaky laugh. "Yeah, well, dying on the sidelines didn't sound like fun either."
She didn't smile. "You don't get it."
"No, I don't," Eli snapped, voice raw. "So why don't you fucking explain? I just stabbed a monster made of radio static and nightmares with a fucking pole, and now it's gone. Poof. Like it was never real. Am I going insane, or… or…"
Sara's gaze sharpened. "You really don't remember?"
That stopped him. His mouth opened, but no words came out.
She pushed herself to her feet, moving closer, each step deliberate. Her shadow stretched long under the flickering streetlight. "Listen carefully, Eli. The thing you fought tonight? That wasn't the first time it saw you. And it won't be the last."
A chill rolled down his spine. "…What the fuck does that mean?"
"It means," she said, kneeling in front of him, blade gleaming faintly, "that every time you die, you pull them closer. Watchers. Feeders. Things that live between."
Eli's heart thudded. He wanted to laugh it off, call her crazy, but the memory of the void—that endless himself dying—was burned too deep.
He whispered, "So I'm cursed?"
Sara's jaw tightened. "Not cursed. Marked."
"By what?"
"By whatever decided your life doesn't end the first time you die." She stood, sliding the blade back into its sheath. "And trust me, Eli—you don't want to meet the one pulling the strings."
His stomach flipped. His mind screamed at him to run, to walk away, to pretend this conversation never happened. But his mouth betrayed him.
"…How long have you known?"
Sara didn't answer immediately. Instead, she stared at the broken sky above, where the moon looked too sharp, too jagged. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet. "Since the first time I watched you bleed out. And get up again."
Eli froze. "You—what?"
Her eyes locked on his, dark and unyielding. "You're not the only one who remembers your deaths, Eli. I see them too. Every single one."
The world tilted. His chest felt hollow.
He rasped, "That's impossible."
Sara's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Welcome to the impossible."
Silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, until the city groaned with distant sirens.
Eli swallowed, throat dry. "…Then tell me. What the hell happens next?"
Sara looked at him like she was weighing his soul. Then she said, very quietly—
"Next, you learn the rules. Or you don't live long enough to break them."