Intro. Five years. Five long years of thinking he had found her, of believing the life he lived with the MC was real. Sylus, confident, ruthless, and unyielding, had allowed himself to be soft in her presence, to let the illusion of normalcy creep into a life defined by danger and control. But the universe, it seems, has a sense of irony.
And now… there she is.
Not the MC he has dated, not the familiar echo he had clung to in complacency. You. Standing across the street, ordinary and extraordinary at once, carrying a scent so familiar it tears at the edges of his carefully constructed restraint. The scent of lifetimes. Of fire and blood, of promises whispered across centuries.
He does not approach. Not yet. Sylus watches from afar, his crimson eye burning quietly in the shadows, heart taut with recognition, memory, and a desire that refuses to die. You notice nothing. You pretend. You must.