Evan reached the base of the hill just as the last of the sun slipped under the horizon, leaving behind a muted wash of lavender and cooling gold. The world felt strangely suspended, like someone had turned the volume of reality down a notch. His footsteps sounded too soft. The wind barely touched him. Even the sound of the cicadas that usually screamed through the evening was muted.
He tightened his hoodie around himself, not because of the cold, but because something in him recognized that he was walking toward a moment that already knew him.
The higher he climbed, the quieter everything became. His mind drifted through the day's fragments: the girl, the strange pressure behind his thoughts, the fatigue that never reached his body. Evan felt that he wasn't being watched anymore. Just… expected.
When he reached the crest of the hill, the sky had darkened into a deep, waiting blue.
And there she was.
The girl stood near the cliff's edge, her silhouette carving a clean, delicate line against the dimming horizon. She looked like she hadn't moved at all since he last saw her that morning. Her posture was perfectly straight, arms loosely at her sides, gaze tilted toward the sky as if she was looking at something beyond the clouds.
When she turned her head toward him, the fading light washed over her face.
He saw her clearly now: beautiful, striking in a way that felt entirely natural. Her features held a quiet symmetry, nothing about her exaggerated or illusory. Her blonde hair fell in loose waves, shifting gently with the evening wind and catching the last scraps of daylight in muted gold.
But her eyes were what held him.
Her eyes possessed a depth that completely defied her youthful face, a maturity that was not supernatural, yet far older than it should have been. It was a calm, observing look, the weight of a century condensed into a single glance.
Evan didn't move.
And she didn't disappear.
For a few seconds, they watched each other across the thinning stretch of grass, neither speaking. He knew that if he tried to approach, she would disappear like all the times before.
So he stayed facing the horizon, letting the tension coiled inside him settle into a patient, uneasy stillness.
The eclipse began slowly, a bite taking shape at the edge of the moon. Shadows lengthened, peeling away from the trees at the hill's base. The temperature dipped by just a few degrees, enough that he pulled his hood up even though the air barely moved.
He kept his eyes on the sky, but every few minutes, he glanced at the girl. Each time, he found her gaze sliding between the moon and him. The first few times, she looked indifferent. But as the shadow crept deeper across the lunar surface, something shifted in her expression.
Concern. Sharp and immediate.
And that frightened him more than anything else.
If someone like her looked unsettled, what did that mean?
A faint pressure built in his chest: subtle, rhythmic, like something inside him had begun to stir. Evan pressed a palm against his sternum, but the sensation didn't go away. Instead, it spread, slow and warm, threading through him like a pulse waking from a long sleep.
By the time the moon turned fully red, the world had narrowed to two things:
The sky.
And whatever was inside him.
Heat unfurled in his chest, expanding through his bloodstream like a breath being exhaled from the inside out. His awareness sharpened, then split open. He felt everything.
The steady pumping of blood through his veins.
The subtle pull and shudder of each muscle.
The expansion of his lungs.
The faint pulse behind his eyes.
It was overwhelming, like his senses had been peeled raw.
Then he felt something else, something that did not belong to him, something that did not belong to this world.
A cold, repulsive current winding through his blood like an intruder. Heavy. Alien. Wrong.
He didn't know how he knew, only that the certainty rose in him like instinct: The warmth in his chest, the strange presence he had always felt, was fighting it. Holding it down.
And now it was straining.
The girl's head snapped toward him. Her eyes widened with alarm.
She whispered a word he didn't understand.
A warning.
Or a curse.
A flash tore through the sky.
Not lightning.
Not anything natural.
It streaked downward in a burning arc, piercing through the crimson light, aimed directly at him.
Evan didn't even have time to brace.
A brutal force slammed through his chest, clean and unforgiving.
For a heartbeat, he didn't feel pain. Just shock.
Then he looked down.
A hole burned through the center of his chest, the edges glowing faintly, as if seared by something older than fire. Blood rushed out in a dark, pulsing wave, soaking his hoodie and running hot down his stomach. His strength vanished all at once.
The world pitched sideways.
Footsteps rushed toward him.
He dimly felt his knees buckle, but he never hit the ground. Hands caught him small but impossibly steady. The girl. Her face hovered over his, no longer serene, no longer distant.
She looked terrified.
Her voice was a whisper, trembling with disbelief.
"…no… it shifted… they forced the moment forward…"
He tried to ask what she meant.
He tried to breathe.
He tried to stay awake.
But everything slid away from him, swallowed by darkness.
And Evan fell.