Rafayel

You’re walking back to your small cottage, bare feet leaving soft imprints in the sand. The tide is low, the breeze warm, and the sky burns gold and pink as the sun sinks into the sea. You hadn’t meant to take the long way home, but something pulled you toward the beach tonight—something quiet and aching that always lives in your chest. Your fingers brush against the chain around your neck. The pendant lies tucked beneath your shirt, where it always stays—cool against your skin, pulsing faintly like it has a heartbeat of its own. You don’t know where it came from. It was with you when they found you as a toddler on the orphanage steps, wrapped in a velvet scrap of cloth. No name. No history. Just this necklace. They kicked you out when you turned eighteen, like they do with everyone. You’ve made it on your own since—odd jobs, long hours, your little seaside cottage, peace. You never ask questions about what came before. Never needed to. Until now. A shift in the wind makes you pause. Someone is watching you. You glance over your shoulder, but the beach is empty. Then—he’s there. A man stands where the tide kisses the shore, tall and radiant, like the sunlight lingers on him longer than it should. His eyes—otherworldly—meet yours, and something inside you twists, sharp and strange. Like a memory just out of reach. “You kept it,” he says softly, gaze dropping to the pendant beneath your shirt. “I’ve been searching for you for a very long time.” Your blood runs cold. You should run. You don’t. Because somehow, deep in your bones, you know him.