The fire still burns low in the corner. The sheets are ruined and I’m lying there like the violence between us hasn’t stopped echoing in my bones. Riven sits at the edge of the bed still shirtless. He’s calm like he didn’t just drag me through the gates of hell and back. I sit up slowly, pulling the sheet with me, more for my ownarmor than modesty. “Now,” I say, voice hoarse. “I’m ready for answers, so tell me what the fuck is going on with me!”
His gaze lifts to mine. Still steady. Still unreadable. “You already know,” he says.
“I don’t know shit, Riven. I’m having visions. People are watching me. And you…” I gesture to the wreckage of our clothes on the floor, “You’re in the middle of it like some smug bastard with a God complex.”
“I never claimed to be a god.”
“No, you act like something worse.”
He doesn’t deny it. Instead, he stands and walks to a small cabinet tucked behind the hearth, pulls out a decanter of something dark, and pours two glasses. When he offers me one, I don’t take it. “Talk,” I growl. He takes a sip from his own, then turns to me.
“You’re not ordinary, Lux.”
“No shit!” I yell, annoyance seeping through my tone.
“You’ve always felt it. The disconnect. The feeling of belonging somewhere else. The pull toward things other people fear.” I stare at him, trying to make sense of his words. “There are others like you,” he continues. “Peoplebound by something ancient. Something violent. Something…unfinished.”
“What does that mean?” I ask as he steps in closer.
“You’re part of a design. A prophecy. One that was set in motion long before you were born.”
I laugh, sharp and bitter. “Of course it’s a prophecy. How fucking original.”
“You’re the only piece that wasn’t supposed to exist,” he says quietly. That shuts me up. “You weren’t predicted. You weren’t written into the ending, and yet—” He reaches out, brushing a finger along the inside of my wrist where my pulse is still thundering. “You’re here. Changing everything.”
I pull my arm back. “What kind of prophecy?”
He hesitates. “One that names four men. Forces. Riders of the end.”The silence punches the air out of my lungs. “Four,” I repeat, voice flat. “And you’re one of them.”
He nods once, “War.” It lands like a weapon. Like a brand. “You’ve met me,” he says. “Now the others will come.”
My skin crawls. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“No,” he says. “You opened the door.”
I slide off the bed, naked but unashamed, the sheet falling from my shoulders like a challenge. “You set this fire, Vescari. But if I burn…I'll take you with me.”
10
The Pale Man
I don’t remember how I even got back home. One second, I’m in his fortress still smoldering and shaking. Next second, I’m in my apartment—door locked, lights off, and my body aching. The city is still alive out there, but inside this apartment everything suddenly feels too silent and still.
I strip out of the shirt I didn’t realize I was still wearing—his shirt—and throw it in the sink like it’s laced with something toxic. Maybe it is, maybe I am.
I open a bottle of whiskey with trembling hands and drink straight from it. The burn barely registers. My skin feels too tight. Like I can’t settle inside it. I move around the apartment, trying to convince myself everything’s fine. The walls are the same, the air is the same, but something has shifted.
I can feel it.
I sit on the edge of the bed now and stare at the notebook that has become my new sketchbook. The lamp flickers beside me and I can hear the faucet dripping when it wasn’t before. I try to ground myself, but my thoughts keep screaming in the relative silence. I keep repeating it over and over again…
“You set this fire, Vescari,” I whisper aloud, voice raw. “But if I burn, I’m taking you with me.” The words taste like ash as they exit my mouth.
I open the sketchbook with shaking fingers. No fire this time. No rage. Just curiosity leading to compulsion. I flip through the pages slowly until my hands hesitate on a page I once again don’t remember drawing. There it is again, the same symbol I couldn’t stop sketching for days. The one that feels like a wound stitched into the paper. I trace it with one fingertip and it hums under my skin as if it’s alive. My breath hitches as I snap the book shut and stand, pacing, trying to anchor myself to the mundane.
I wash a glass, fold a blanket, and recheck the locks. Nothing is helping to shake this feeling that something iswrong. I glance at the door because somethingiswrong. I know it.
A knock of three short raps causing me to freeze. No one ever knocks this late. I wait but it’s only silence now. I inch forward,pressing my ear to the solid door, and wishing it had a peephole. Nothing. My heart races, and I back away slowly.Knock. Knock.Two this time. Sharper. Like they know I’m listening and waiting for me to invite them in or some shit.
