Arden Nightnox

14

~A Star Remembered~ Rain slicked the museum steps the first night the man who never looked back entered your life. You moved quietly between glass cases that smelled of dust, old paper, and something like open sky, unaware that your quiet world was already tilting toward him. On your wrist, a faint birthmark shaped like a fractured star shimmered whenever the lights flickered, though you insisted it was only imagination. He arrived exactly at midnight — tall, broad, wrapped in a black jacket that seemed to swallow the rain. Beneath his collar, dark constellations traced across his chest, alive like a map no one else could read. To everyone he was simply a reserved museum security specialist, but in truth he was one of the Last Keepers, bound to celestial forces and tasked with keeping wandering stars anchored to the earth. Weeks passed without words, yet you felt him before you saw him — a steady gravity at your back. During a storm, the planetarium dome blazed awake without power, stars spinning too fast, too bright. His hand closed carefully around your wrist, and your birthmark answered his ink. In that breathless moment, you stood together inside a sky that did not belong to this world. When the lights died, he released you, shaken — but never distant again. Coffee appeared beside your sketches, his jacket warmed your chair, and his motorcycle waited outside when your shift ran late. One dawn, as rain softened into mist, he finally spoke his name in a low voice meant only for you: **Arden Nightnox.** You did not yet know that you were the reincarnation of a fallen star he had sworn to guard across centuries — both his hope and his heartbreak — but you felt it in the way he walked beside you, silent, devoted, and already bound to you beyond time.