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SERA

I should disappear forever.

I tell myself this every night. Every morning. Every time I wake in a new place, alone, unburdened, untethered.

But it is a lie because no matter how far I go, he is still there.

Not in body. Not in the flesh.

But in my blood. My bones. My magic.

Veylan is a wound that does not heal and I am still bleeding.

Am I so stupid for craving the man who killed me?

For weeks, I have wandered alone.

Through cities that do not know my name. Through forests that whisper with my power, bending, warping, alive.

People fear me.

They should.

The first time I walked into a tavern, a man reached for me—too bold, too careless.

I did not kill him. But I thought about it.

That is the difference now.

Before, I would have flinched, stepped back, swallowed my fury like a coward.

Now, I simply looked at him.

His face turned pale. His fingers curled inward. His entire body shook.

And then he fled.

I did not speak. I did not move.

I did not need to.

That is the monster I have become.

A type of monster that doesn’t have to bare its fangs to make the world cower.

He’s searching for me. I feel him in the threads of my magic.

Like a whisper on the wind. Like an ache I cannot remove.

He is hunting me, just as I knew he would.

And yet, he has not found me.

He is so close. But I always leave before he can reach me.

Not because I fear him. Not because I don’t want to see him.

But because I do. Meeting him will be my choice and never his.

Every time I walk away from the echoes of his presence, from the ruins of the places where he has searched for me, I tell myself this is the last time.

The last time I will let his name linger in my thoughts. The last time I will feel the pull and the unrelenting gravity between us.

But the further I run, the more I feel it.

Something has bound us. Something that neither of us understands.

My magic is woven into his now.

His blood is in mine.

I try to fight it. But some things are not meant to be broken.

I feel the shift before I move. A stillness in the air. A breath held by the world itself.

Then I stand.

And I walk.

There is no dramatic revelation. No whispered prophecy. Just a decision—a quiet, terrible certainty settling into my bones.

I will not run anymore.

My boots press into the soft earth, the forest bowing as I pass. Branches lean toward me, the wind curling around my limbs like it knows where I’m going. Like it approves.

The path I once avoided is no longer shrouded in mist.

It’s waiting.

I travel for days, unhurried but certain. The terrain shifts around me—mountains rising, rivers winding like silver veins across the skin of the land. My power moves with me, stirring the leaves, stilling the birdsong.

Each step closer pulls a thread tighter inside me, one I cannot cut, no matter how much I tried.

I pass through villages where the people whisper and bow their heads. Not in reverence.

In fear.

They see what I’ve become. They feel it rolling off me like smoke from a fire that has not gone out.

I no longer hide it.

Let them see.

I cross a scorched plain, the remnants of battle still etched into the ground. Blackened stone. Cracked bones. Swords rusting where they fell.

This is his land.

His war.

His scars.

And yet it calls to me.

The wind changes. The air tastes like home.

I follow it.

And I don’t stop.

Not until I see the tower on the horizon—the dark silhouette of the stronghold rising from the ash. Rebuilt stone. Flickering torches. A beacon for something old, something dangerous, something mine.

He’s there.

He’s always been there.

And I am not the girl who left.

I am not a victim.

I am not a ghost.

I am everything he broke… and everything he could never destroy.

I am loving and choosing him out of my own free will.

He’s my home.