MAY
The Keeper's hand touches her chest.
The world detonates.
Not with pain —
but with remembrance.
Light surges through May's body, flooding her veins, burning hot and cold at once. Her breath shatters, her knees buckle, and she feels the bond—
not as a thread,
not as a pull,
but as a living thing uncoiling inside her.
Her vision goes white.
Her ears ring.
Then—
Everything opens.
She's falling.
Not through air, but through memory.
She sees Nathel.
Not the Nathel on the ground —
But the Nathel from months ago.
Alive.
Laughing.
Leaning against her dorm room doorframe with that crooked smile she used to pretend she didn't love.
His thumb wiping her tears.
His voice promising,
"I'm here. Always."
Another memory crashes in—
May curled on this same street, shaking so violently she could barely breathe.
Her hands glowing with light she didn't understand.
Nathel gripping her cheeks, terrified.
"May— look at me— tell me what's happening— May!"
And her voice—
raw, breaking, desperate—
"I don't want this anymore! I can't— I can't breathe with this bond inside me— it's killing us— Nathel, PLEASE— make it stop!"
Nathel hugging her so tightly she almost passed out.
Then the Keeper stepping into the street for the first time.
Offering the impossible.
"Forget."
And May, with a ground-shaking sob:
"Yes."
The memory shatters into dust—
And another replaces it.
A moment she never remembered:
Nathel kneeling before the Keeper, alone.
Saying softly—
"If she forgets…
Then erase me too."
May gasps.
His voice cracks as he continues:
"Erase what I am.
Erase the power.
Erase the part of me tied to her.
If she's going to live normally…
let me live normal beside her."
May's heart breaks inside the memory.
The Keeper's voice:
"You would give up everything?"
Nathel's answer is instant.
"For her? I already did."
The memory dissolves—
And the light pulls her back into her own body, slamming her into the present with a force that knocks the breath out of her lungs.
MAY — PRESENT
She opens her eyes.
Everything is different.
Her senses sharpen—
The air tastes metallic.
The ground hums beneath her palms.
The sky has threads of silver woven through it like veins.
She's glowing.
Her skin is laced with faint white markings—
like constellations.
Like a map of something ancient and sacred.
The Keeper steps back.
"It is done."
May clutches her chest as the bond roars awake—
wild, alive, pulsing like a second heartbeat beneath her own.
Nathel seizes on the ground, light crackling across his skin.
"Nathel!" she cries, stumbling toward him.
The Keeper raises a hand.
"Touch him now and the awakening may tear him in half."
May freezes.
"He's hurting!"
"He is transforming," the Keeper says.
"Just as you are."
The silver light inside Nathel intensifies, outlining every muscle, every scar, every fracture in his soul. His body arches off the ground, his mouth open in a silent scream.
May's own chest burns in response.
She feels everything he feels.
His fear.
His pain.
His memories colliding inside him as the erased pieces force their way back.
She can't stand it.
"Please," she begs the Keeper, "help him!"
The Keeper looks at her with ancient, unreadable eyes.
"Child," she says quietly,
"You do not understand what you have chosen."
The ground trembles beneath them.
Cracks form in the pavement—
thin lines of glowing silver.
The sky ripples.
The air warps.
May turns back to Nathel.
His glow fades—
then surges—
then stabilizes.
Slowly, slowly, he collapses onto his back, chest rising and falling in ragged breaths.
His eyes open.
Silver.
Not fully—
Not permanently—
but glowing like moonlight trapped behind his pupils.
He looks at May.
Really looks.
Recognition floods his face—
shattering, breaking, overflowing.
"May…"
Her breath stops.
He knows her.
Not the version she pretended to be.
Not the version she forgot.
Her.
Fully.
He reaches out a trembling hand.
"You— you chose—"
His voice breaks.
"May, you chose me."
She grabs his hand, tears streaming down her face.
"I always would."
The bond snaps into place—
not as pain,
not as chaos—
but as power.
Light erupts between their hands, swirling, intertwining, forming a pulse that spreads outward in rings of white energy.
The Keeper shields her eyes.
"Fools," she whispers.
"Brave fools."
The light rises into the sky, cracking open the last remnants of whatever seal they had placed on themselves.
May gasps as the bond finalizes—
The last thread sinking into her heart.
And then—
A voice echoes across the street.
Not Nathel's.
Not the Keeper's.
Something deeper.
Something older.
Something that has been chasing them through mirrors and shadows and broken memories.
"Awakened…"
"…at last."
May's blood runs cold.
The Keeper's head snaps toward the darkness.
"No. Not now."
But it's too late.
A familiar shadow unfurls itself from the nearest building—
tall, skeletal, wrong.
Only this time…
It bows.
To May.
To Nathel.
"The bond is complete," it whispers.
"And now… the true hunt begins."