Chapter Cover
A stormy night. A dim streetlight flickers. A lone woman clutches her coat as a man stands across the road, half his face hidden in shadow. Their eyes meet—but one of them is lying.
Tagline: Some encounters are accidents. Others are fate in disguise.
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POV: Eliana
The rain fell harder, needling my skin with every drop as though it wanted to carve me open.
I hated this walk home. Willow Street was long, cracked, and always deserted after midnight. Everyone knew the town's superstition about storms: When the lightning speaks, keep your eyes down. Don't look for the shadow, or it will look back.
But I'd always laughed at stories like that. Until tonight.
I pressed my coat tighter, trying to ignore the uneasy crawl down my spine. It wasn't just the storm. It was… something else. Like I was being pulled along a string I couldn't see.
And then I saw him.
A tall figure under the broken streetlight, half his face swallowed by shadow. He didn't move, didn't flinch at the thunder. Just… watched.
The street was empty except for us.
I froze, every instinct telling me to run, but my eyes—traitors that they were—refused to leave his. They were dark, yet burning. Familiar. Like I'd known them once before.
My heart fluttered in confusion, fear tangled with something far worse: recognition.
Do I know him?
I didn't. And yet, I did.
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POV: Adrian
I shouldn't have stepped into the light.
The curse had rules, and I'd broken the first one. Keep to the shadows, stay unseen until the time is right. But the moment she turned the corner, umbrella-less, rain plastering her dark hair to her face, I was lost.
Eliana.
She always walked too fast, always looking over her shoulder, like her body remembered the fear her mind had forgotten. Each lifetime was the same. She never remembered me at first. But I remembered everything.
I gripped the crimson thread wound tightly around my palm. Invisible to her, but binding us both. Always binding.
The storm wasn't just weather. It was the signal—the reminder that the shadows would soon hunt her again. I should have left. Should have watched from a distance. But then her eyes met mine, and everything inside me fractured.
She didn't know me.
But she felt me.
I saw it in her trembling lips, the way her breath caught.
The curse wasn't done with us. Not yet.
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POV: Eliana
Lightning struck, painting his face in a flash of white.
He was young, though not too young. Strong jaw, soaked hair clinging to his forehead, eyes as endless as night. Handsome wasn't the word—he was the kind of man that didn't belong in a place like this. Too sharp. Too magnetic.
A dangerous kind of beauty.
For a second, I thought he would cross the road. But he didn't. He only tilted his head slightly, like he was… listening. To me. To the thunder. To something neither of us could see.
I stumbled backward, breaking our gaze. My pulse thundered in my ears.
When I looked again, he was gone.
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POV: Adrian
I moved before the lightning faded. She couldn't see me disappear; that would make her question too soon.
But God, the way she'd looked at me… I felt the old ache deep in my bones. She didn't remember, but her soul did. It always did.
The shadows would sense it too.
And when they came for her, I'd be waiting.
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POV: The Shadow
He broke the rule. Again.
I slithered closer through the storm, unseen, savoring the tremor in her chest. She thought it was fear of the stranger. But no—she was afraid of me.
She just didn't know it yet.
Every lifetime, he tried to guard her. Every lifetime, he failed.
And this one would be no different.
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POV: Eliana (Later that Night)
By the time I reached my little house on Willow Street, my clothes were soaked through. I closed the door, dropped my keys on the table, and let out the breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.
Safe.
But the word felt like a lie.
The streetlight's image haunted me. His eyes. His silence. That impossible pull in my chest.
I made myself tea, hands still trembling. I turned on the radio to drown the silence, but even with music humming through the room, I couldn't shake the feeling that someone was still out there. Watching.
And when I went to hang my keys, I froze.
A single crimson thread was tied around the keyring.
Perfectly knotted. Perfectly red.
I didn't put it there.