The rain didn’t fall gently.

It crashed from the heavens in torrents, soaking the city in a grey blur. Thunder cracked across the skyline like a warning too late, and lightning split the clouds, casting flickering light on cold, empty streets.

Aeryn stood there, barely registering the downpour, his breath fogging the air. His coat clung to him like dead weight, and water dripped from his hair into his eyes, but he didn’t blink. His gaze was fixed on the man walking away from him, disappearing into the blur of headlights and shadows.

He should have said something. Anything.

But all that came out was silence. Again.

It was always silence in the end.

A screech of tires shattered the stillness.

Aeryn turned—too slow. The blinding headlights came fast, too fast. Then came the impact. Bone snapped. Air vanished from his lungs. His body lifted, then slammed into the cold asphalt. For a moment, the world went black.

Then everything rushed back—sound, pain, confusion.

People screamed. Someone shouted for help. He heard footsteps rushing toward him. But Aeryn couldn’t move. He lay still, feeling the warmth of the pool beneath him. Rain mixed with blood, staining the street red and silver.

His heart pounded weakly, fading like a slow drumbeat. The pain dulled into a cold ache. His vision flickered.

A face appeared above him—someone he didn’t know. Their lips moved, but the words didn’t reach him. He didn’t care anymore.

Strangely, he wasn’t afraid.

Then it happened.

The chaos disappeared. The city faded. And all that remained was a pair of eyes—storm-gray, distant, watching him not with pity, but something deeper.

Familiar. Haunting.

He had seen them before… in dreams? In a life he hasn’t lived yet?

“Wait…” he whispered hoarsely, reaching up with trembling fingers. “Please…”

The figure was gone. The eyes vanished.

Darkness swallowed everything.

---

Death, he had assumed, was final.

But as consciousness clawed its way back, Aeryn realized he had been wrong.

It wasn’t peace he returned to.

It was mud.

He jerked upright, coughing violently, spitting out cold, foul-tasting water. His lungs burned as if fire lived inside them. He choked and gasped, finally rolling onto his side on a wet, mossy patch of ground.

The air was thick—humid, heavy with the scent of decay and dampness. Every breath he took brought a taste of something unfamiliar and wrong.

“Where…” His voice cracked, hoarse and unfamiliar.

He blinked against the light—or the lack of it. Overhead, a sickly green sky churned, thick with dark clouds that moved unnaturally, pulsing like they were alive. A distant rumble rolled across the sky—not thunder. Something deeper. More primal.

He pushed himself to sit up, knees trembling. His heart pounded, but not out of fear. Out of disbelief.

The stream he had just crawled from looked more like ink than water. The trees nearby were twisted, gnarled into shapes that hurt his eyes if he stared too long. There were no buildings, no roads, no voices.

Just silence… and the occasional distant howl.

Everything about this place felt wrong.

His gaze dropped to his hands.

They were… not his.

Smaller. Paler. No scars. His hands had been calloused, rough from years of typing, sketching, living. These hands were untouched. New.

He stumbled to a puddle and stared down.

A different face stared back at him. Younger. Clean. Pale gray-blue eyes that weren’t his—but somehow were. His hair was lighter, longer. His jawline sharper. He looked almost… elfin.

“What the hell is this…?”

His breathing quickened. He scrambled backward, slipped on the moss, and landed hard on his back.

This had to be a dream. Or madness.

But everything felt too real.

Then came the sound again—a growl. Not from a dog or a wolf, but something much larger. It vibrated through the ground, making the trees tremble.

His body froze. Every nerve screamed for him to run.

Behind a curtain of vines, something moved. Massive. Lurking. Watching.

He couldn't breathe.

A shadow shifted again. Then another, nearer. Low snarls echoed through the trees.

“No,” he whispered, trying to back away. “No, no, no—”

A branch snapped behind him.

He spun around—and saw him.

A figure stepped through the underbrush, parting it like paper. Tall and poised, he moved with a quiet grace that spoke of power and danger. He wore black armor that shimmered like glass under the green sky, and a long cloak flowed behind him, edged in silver threads. A sword was sheathed across his back, but he made no move to draw it.

His face—Aeryn stopped breathing again.

The man was beautiful in a way that felt unreal. High cheekbones, smooth skin, dark lashes framing those same storm-gray eyes that had haunted his final moments. His dark hair fell to his shoulders in soft, wind-swept layers, untouched by the grime and rot of this place.

He didn’t look human. He looked carved. Divine.

But his expression was unreadable. Cold. Calculating.

And yet, when their eyes met, something passed between them—quick, unspoken. Recognition?

"You don’t belong here,” the man said, his voice low and velvet-smooth, with the edge of a blade behind it.

Aeryn's heart stuttered. He tried to stand, but his legs were still shaking. “W-Where is this? What’s going on?”

The man frowned slightly. “You shouldn’t have survived the Crossing.”

“Crossing?”

“I should leave you here,” he muttered, half to himself. “You’ll be dead in minutes.”

A sound erupted in the trees. Not a growl this time—a scream. Animal, but distorted. Painful.

The man stepped closer and knelt in front of him.

His tone was sharper now. “Listen to me. If you want to live, you follow me. Don’t speak. Don’t run off. Don’t question what you see.”

“Wait—who are you? Why do you look familiar?”

The man’s eyes narrowed for a second, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he stood and turned, his cloak sweeping the ground behind him.

Aeryn hesitated.

Should he trust this stranger?

But the howls were growing louder, and his instincts screamed that staying here meant death.

He got up, wobbling, and followed.

---

They moved through dense, tangled forest. The trees bent unnaturally, their limbs reaching like fingers. Bioluminescent insects lit the air in bursts of violet. Strange creatures chittered in the shadows.

The man said nothing.

Aeryn watched him as they walked. Every movement was controlled, fluid, almost feline. He wasn’t just strong—he was experienced. He belonged to this place in a way Aeryn never could.

After nearly half an hour, they stopped in a small hollow hidden by thick rock walls and vines. A fire was already burning—lit magically, maybe—and Aeryn sat near it, his body finally beginning to thaw.

The man stood guard, watching the treeline.

After a long silence, Aeryn asked, “What’s your name?”

The man glanced at him. “Kael.”

“I’m Aeryn,” he replied softly.

Kael’s eyes lingered on him for a moment. “I know.”

Aeryn’s chest tightened.

"You know me?”

Kael didn’t reply. He turned back toward the shadows.

The silence grew again. But this time, it wasn’t empty.

It was full of questions neither of them were ready to ask.

The fire crackled softly.

Aeryn sat huddled close to it, hands outstretched, trying to pull warmth into his still-damp body. The green glow of the alien sky barely filtered through the dense canopy above, casting twisted shadows that danced across the clearing.

He didn’t speak. Not because he didn’t want to, but because every word that hovered on his tongue felt like the wrong one. There was too much to ask—and somehow, too much he already feared to know.

Kael stood several feet away, back turned, watching the woods with a stillness so absolute it made Aeryn feel like he was vibrating out of sync with the world. Kael hadn’t moved since they arrived, except to glance briefly at Aeryn’s limbs as if assessing whether he was truly functional.

He hadn’t spoken again, either.

Aeryn wasn’t even sure he breathed.

The silence between them wasn’t exactly hostile—it was worse. It was unreadable.

“Kael,” Aeryn finally said, voice low and hesitant.

The man didn’t turn.

“I need to know where I am.”

A pause.

Then, softly: “You wouldn’t understand.”

Aeryn’s frustration spiked. “Try me.”

Kael exhaled through his nose. “This place has no name that your tongue would recognize. The locals call it Ilithien. A shard-world.”

“Shard-world?”

Kael turned then, his gray eyes catching the firelight—two chips of a storm trapped in glass.

“This land was once part of a greater plane. Broken during the Sundering, left adrift in the Veil between realms.”

Aeryn’s heart stuttered. He wasn’t sure what disturbed him more—the unfamiliar words, or how naturally they spilled from Kael’s lips, like history recited from memory.

“I died,” Aeryn whispered. “I remember the car. The street. I remember… blood.”

“And yet you woke up here,” Kael said, stepping closer, cloak dragging slightly behind. “Which you should not have. No soul crosses the Veil without being summoned.”

“So I was summoned?”

“No.” Kael’s jaw tightened. “That’s what troubles me.”

Aeryn absorbed that in silence.

The fire popped, sending a spray of glowing embers into the air. Aeryn’s eyes flicked upward again, toward that sick green sky. The light it cast made his skin look bruised.

“Why is the sky like that?” he asked.

Kael followed his gaze.

“This place is... infected.”

Aeryn blinked. “Infected?”

“The Veil is thinning. Corruption seeps through. Warped light, twisted creatures—this realm is being slowly devoured by what lies beyond.”

Aeryn’s breath caught.

“This isn’t just another world,” he murmured. “It’s dying.”

“Yes,” Kael said simply.

“And I’m stuck here?”

A beat passed.

“You may not be stuck,” Kael said. “But returning to your world... would take power that hasn't existed for centuries.”

Aeryn let that settle. He drew his knees to his chest and stared into the fire, feeling the heat do little to thaw the ice in his chest.

This wasn’t a dream.

He was dead. Reborn—or pulled—into a place of rot and decay, a place collapsing under its own skies. And the only person who knew anything about it was a stranger with eyes too deep and a face too perfect to trust.

But trust was all he had.

After a while, Kael stepped away from the clearing’s edge and knelt beside him.

“You’ll need to rest soon,” he said. “We move at dawn.”

Aeryn blinked. “There’s dawn here?”

“A sick version of it,” Kael said. “But the beasts sleep during it. Mostly.”

Aeryn hesitated. “What exactly are we running from?”

Kael’s expression didn’t change.

“They’re called the Hollowed. Beings born of corrupted essence. They were once human, animal, even divine—but now they are only mouths and hunger. They sense the Veil-walkers like blood in the water.”

“Veil-walkers?”

“That’s what you are now. A soul not born of this world. Your scent... it calls to them.”

Aeryn shivered.

“So they’ll keep coming?”

Kael nodded. “Always.”

They sat in silence again. But this time, it felt less sharp. Less like a wall between them.

“You weren’t surprised when I appeared,” Aeryn said after a moment. “You were already there. Watching.”

“I felt the tremor when you crossed over,” Kael admitted. “It was small—too small. No spell, no circle, no offering. I went to investigate.”

Aeryn’s eyes searched Kael’s face. “So… why didn’t you leave me behind?”

Kael looked away. “I don’t know.”

Aeryn didn’t believe that for a second. But he didn’t press. Not yet.

Instead, he lay back on the mossy ground and looked up at the strange sky. The clouds above shifted slowly, pulsing like veins, casting the forest in eerie, changing light.

The longer he stared, the more wrong it felt.

Not just unfamiliar—wrong. As if some deep part of him, some ancestral memory, rejected it.

“This sky doesn’t belong to me,” he whispered.

Kael glanced over.

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”

---

Sleep did not come easily.

Even when exhaustion dragged him under, Aeryn’s dreams were strange. Not nightmares—but not comforting, either.

He saw a vast hall of obsidian mirrors. Each reflected a version of himself: young, old, broken, monstrous. In one, he had wings of light. In another, eyes of flame. In the last, he stood beside Kael, both wearing crowns of shadow and stars.

Then came fire.

He woke up with a gasp, heart racing.

The fire in the clearing had burned low. Kael still sat, perfectly still, his blade drawn and resting across his knees. He didn’t look tired.

“You don’t sleep?” Aeryn asked.

Kael shook his head. “Not anymore.”

Aeryn pulled himself up. “Are you even human?”

Kael looked at him then—truly looked. There was something sad in the way he tilted his head. “Once.”

The answer chilled Aeryn more than any wind could.

---

By morning—if it could be called that—the sky turned from green to a dim violet, still bruised and strange but slightly less threatening.

Kael led the way, weaving through the trees with ghost-like precision. Aeryn followed, stumbling more than once, but slowly growing used to the terrain.

The forest changed the deeper they went. The trees bled sap that glowed faintly blue. Stones whispered when he passed them, in a language he couldn’t understand. At one point, they passed a skeleton half-buried in moss—too long-limbed to be human.

“What happens if I stay here too long?” Aeryn asked quietly.

Kael didn’t look back. “You change.”

“Into one of those… Hollowed things?”

“No. That only happens if you're consumed.” He paused. “But the Veil leaves its mark. It twists even the strong.”

“Has it twisted you?”

Kael stopped walking.

He turned, slowly. “Would it matter if it had?”

Aeryn swallowed. “I don’t know.”

Kael studied him, unreadable. Then turned again and kept walking.

---

Hours passed.

They came upon a stone path, nearly overgrown. A shrine sat at the end of it, cracked and crumbling, moss coating its pillars.

Kael approached it carefully.

“This used to be a place of warding,” he murmured. “Long ago.”

He stepped aside so Aeryn could see.

Inside the shrine, there was a statue—two figures standing side by side. One wore a crown of feathers. The other held a blade to the sky.

Aeryn stepped closer, staring.

“I’ve seen them,” he whispered.

Kael’s head turned sharply. “Where?”

“In my dreams. Last night.”

Kael moved to his side, looking at the statue again. His jaw was tight.

“The Veil moves through dreams,” he said. “But only for those with old blood.”

“What does that mean?”

Kael didn’t answer.

Instead, he knelt at the base of the statue and placed his hand on the stone.

The air shifted.

A glyph burned into the moss, glowing bright gold. It pulsed, and suddenly, Aeryn felt his knees buckle. Not from pain—but memory.

Something ancient stirred in him. A song half-remembered. A promise long broken.

Then it was gone.

Kael stood. “We keep moving. We’re not far from a Watchpoint. You’ll be safer there.”

“Will I?”

Kael met his eyes. “Safer. Not safe.”

---

As the forest thinned, and the wind changed direction, Aeryn walked just behind Kael, trying not to let the thousand questions racing in his head distract him.

But one thought wouldn’t leave him.

Those storm-gray eyes.

They had stared at him as he lay dying. As if Kael had been there—before.

Before this life.

Before this world.

And the strangest part?

Aeryn didn’t feel afraid of him.

He felt like he’d come home.

The Watchpoint looked like a ruin from another age.

Moss-covered stone arches jutted from the earth like broken ribs, half-buried under layers of creeping vines and centuries of silence. Wind whistled through the open spaces where walls should have been, and the air shimmered faintly with old magic—magic that buzzed across Aeryn’s skin like static.

Kael moved ahead, silent as ever. His long coat fluttered around his legs as he stepped onto a worn circle of carved runes at the center of the crumbled sanctuary.

“This place is protected?” Aeryn asked, hesitant.

Kael’s hand hovered over the center rune. “It was. Long ago.”

A soft pulse of light flickered beneath his palm.

“And now?” Aeryn asked, stepping closer.

Kael glanced over his shoulder, his expression unreadable. “We’ll find out.”

With that, he pressed his hand flat against the stone.

The ground beneath them hummed—low and strange, like a breath held for too long. The carvings flared gold, briefly illuminating the entire circle. Then, just as quickly, they dimmed to a dull glow.

Aeryn stood just outside its edge, uneasy. “What if it doesn’t hold?”

“Then we run.” Kael said it simply, without fear. “But we’ll have time. A ward this old wakes slowly.”

“Comforting,” Aeryn muttered.

Kael stepped back and looked at him, finally holding eye contact longer than a moment.

“You’re changing.”

Aeryn blinked. “What?”

Kael’s gaze lingered. “The Veil is touching you. Already.”

Aeryn frowned. “What does that even mean?”

Kael hesitated. “It means... you’re remembering things you never learned.”

That wasn’t comforting either.

But he wasn’t wrong.

Since waking in this world, Aeryn had felt it—images, sounds, flashes of memory that weren’t his. Or weren’t supposed to be. He hadn’t told Kael, but last night, after the statue, he’d dreamed again. Of fire. Of a man falling into it. Of a promise made in blood.

He hadn’t seen Kael’s face in the dream.

But he’d felt him there.

---

They made camp in the center of the Watchpoint. Aeryn watched as Kael set stones in a circle, then murmured something in a language Aeryn didn’t know. The fire that sparked to life wasn’t red, but silver-blue, flickering like moonlight.

“How do you do that?” Aeryn asked, watching the flames.

Kael glanced up. “I bind the memory of fire to the present.”

Aeryn stared. “That’s… poetic.”

Kael shrugged one shoulder. “It’s survival.”

Still, something about the phrase stuck in Aeryn’s mind. The memory of fire…

He sat across from Kael, letting the warmth seep into his skin. He was tired in a way that sleep didn’t fix—tired like something inside him was waking up too fast.

“Why are you really helping me?” he asked quietly.

Kael didn’t answer at first. Then he said, “You remind me of someone.”

Aeryn tilted his head. “Someone from here?”

Kael shook his head. “No. Someone from before.”

Aeryn blinked. “You mean… another world?”

“Another life.”

The answer made something twist inside Aeryn’s chest. “Who?”

Kael’s eyes met his, gray and stormy. “A man I failed.”

---

That night, Aeryn dreamed again.

This time, it was clearer.

He stood in a ruined temple—columns split by time, vines crawling up cracked marble. The sky above was ablaze, red-gold and burning, and in front of him stood a man.

Kael.

But not the Kael he knew.

This Kael wore black armor streaked with dried blood. His eyes glowed faintly, his hands crackled with magic, and he looked at Aeryn with something between pain and reverence.

“You shouldn’t have followed me,” he whispered.

“I made a promise,” Aeryn said—though it wasn’t his voice.

“I broke mine,” Kael replied.

A pause.

Then Kael reached out, fingertips brushing Aeryn’s jaw.

“You always return to me,” he said softly. “Even when you don’t remember.”

The dream shattered.

---

Aeryn woke with a start.

The fire still glowed, and Kael sat as he always did—still, watching the dark. But when Aeryn shifted, Kael turned his head.

“Bad dream?”

Aeryn looked at him, searching his face. “I saw you.”

Kael didn’t react.

“We were in a temple. The sky was on fire.”

Now Kael’s gaze sharpened, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his features.

Aeryn pushed further. “You said I always return to you.”

Silence.

Kael didn’t deny it.

“I’ve lived before, haven’t I?” Aeryn whispered.

Kael’s voice was low. “Many times.”

“And you knew me?”

Kael looked away. “Yes.”

Aeryn’s heart pounded. “Were we… something?”

Kael’s voice cracked like distant thunder. “You died in my arms.”

The words stunned Aeryn.

He didn’t know what to say.

Didn’t know if the tightness in his throat was grief, fear, or something far older.

“But I don’t remember,” Aeryn murmured.

“You will,” Kael said. “The Veil never forgets.”

Aeryn stared into the fire, and for the first time, he realized something terrifying.

He had died.

But maybe… he had died for Kael once.

And maybe, just maybe, he would again.