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KAEL

The air here tastes flat, heavy with salt and manmade chemicals.

Still, I breathe it in.

The veil between worlds thins near water—it’s how I slipped through. Cloaked by magic and shadow, I move unseen, though this realm grates against my skin like sandpaper on wet stone.

Earth is ugly in the wrong places. Loud. Polluted.

But here? Here, at this so-called aquarium, something ancient stirs.

She stands knee deep in a pool, a curved smile on her lips, her hair tucked up beneath a cap, skin kissed by sun.

Curvy, golden, and radiant.

My fingers twitch.

“Good girl,” she croons to the beast beside her—a sea lion, I believe they call it.

The creature barks, then nuzzles her hip like a pup.

She laughs, low and musical, and something cracks open in my chest.

Phoebe.

That’s the name I stole from a badge near the edge of her station.

And though I knew nothing else about her, I knew she was mine.

Not just because of her beauty. Not because she speaks with the voice of kindness to creatures lesser men would torment.

It’s deeper.

The tide shifted when I stepped near her.

My runes pulsed, burning hot beneath my skin.

The sea inside me— what magic remains —answered something in her.

She has no idea she’s calling to me.

No idea that her soul might be the one the Fates carved out of foam and starlight to balance mine.

No idea what her touch could restore.

The sea has chosen her. And so have I.

I catch my reflection in the thick glass of the enclosure—horns curved back like black coral, runes glowing along my throat and chest like bioluminescent tide lines.

No glamour tonight.

No illusion.

Because the woman meant for me will see all of me. She’ll have to.

I will not take her with lies.

But I will take her.

One moment, she’s laughing at a sea lion's antics.

The next, the water around her begins to stir, curling unnaturally with currents that answer to me and me alone.

She gasps and turns—wide eyes locking onto mine as I step out of the shadows and into the light of her world.

“You—you can’t be back here!” she says, but her voice shakes.

Not with fear.

With knowing.

With instinct.

I smile. “No, I suppose I shouldn’t be.”

Her breath hitches. The wind stutters. The sea hushes.

“But I came anyway. Because you called me. And now, Phoebe of Earth, I’m calling you back.”

She stumbles as the water rises, swirling around her legs. My magic coils and leaps, a whirlpool blooming beneath her feet.

“No—wait!” she shouts, but the portal is already opening.

I reach for her as her world breaks apart, and mine prepares to welcome her home.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking what’s mine.”

To Castletide.

To my ruined lands.

To Nightfall.

The end.