The birds called as Morrigan stepped off the curb.
She wasn't thinking clearly- her phone buzzed in her pocket, her thoughts still tangled around Samael's strange words from the other night. "Sometimes the boundary weakens." What did that even mean? And why had it sounded less like philosophy and more like a warning?
The rain had stopped, but the roads still gleamed, black and slick like obsidian. Her boots clicked against the pavement, soft but sure. A voice somewhere behind her called her name-maybe Alice, maybe just a student who recognized her from class- but she didn't turn around.
Then- A rush of light. A scream of tires. Headlights surged toward her like twin stars crashing from the heavens.
Morrigan froze.
And then suddenly, she wasn't alone.
An arm slammed around her waist, wrenching her backward. She collided hard into a chest, a body, and the force knocked the air out of her lungs. The car screeched past just inches from where she'd been, its horn blaring a delayed, angry wail. Someone cursed from the sidewalk. The moment stretched, suspended like a raindrop mid-fall.
She looked up.
Samael.
His face was tight with something she hadn't seen before- panic. His hand gripped her arm, the other flat against her lower back, holding her firm, anchoring her in the moment.
Her breath caught in her throat. His touch was ice and fire all at once.
Then- He hissed.
A flash, faint but unmistakable, lit up beneath his sleeve. A glowing mark, etched in eerie lines, shimmered across the skin of his wrist before vanishing just as quickly as it came.
Samael recoiled as if burned, stumbling a step back.
Their eyes locked. He looked stricken, and not from the near-death moment- something deeper. Something wrong.
"You-" Morrigan started.
But he was already gone.
He turned and walked -no, vanished- into the darkness between buildings, like the shadows welcomed him home.
"Wait!" she called, chasing after him, but by the time she rounded the corner, there was nothing but wind and silence.
Later that day, Morrigan sat curled in her bedroom window, still in her coat, her fingers pressed to the place on her arm where he'd touched her. Her skin tingled like the memory was still there, warm despite the chill. Her heart refused to slow down.
She replayed it over and over again- the car, the blur of motion, him. That flash. That mark.
Not a tattoo.
It glowed.
She wasn't imagining it. She knew she wasn't.
She didn't tell Alice. Not yet. Alice would either panic or laugh it off, and Morrigan needed neither.
What she needed was answers.
She opened her notebook -the one she always carried, half-full of class notes and half-full of thoughts she never intended to share- and began to scribble.
He touched me. Not like a person touches another person. It felt like something broke when he did. There was something on his wrist. A mark. Black, glowing. It faded too quickly. It burned him. It hurt him to touch me. Why? I've never felt more alive than I did in that second. And I've never seen him look more terrified.
Beneath a crumbling archway in the old part of town, Samael sat alone among the stones and overgrowth, slick with rain and the wind threading through his coat like whispers.
He stared down at his hand. The one that had touched her. The one that still throbbed with that unnatural ache.
The Reaper's Mark was glowing faintly beneath his skin, pulsing with reprimand. He clenched his fist until the light disappeared.
He'd broken a rule.
Not the kind written in books or passed down by stern voices in smoky halls—but a rule older than all that. An instinct built into his bones, into the system that made him what he was.
Do not touch the living.
It created bonds.
It invited memories.
It weakened the Veil.
And yet, in that moment, when he saw the car, he hadn't thought. He hadn't hesitated. Something in him moved, and he hated it.
Hated how human it had felt to care.
He'd spent decades perfecting distance. Emotional quarantine. But she had a way of pulling the silence apart. Of making things loud inside him again.
Samael leaned back against the stone, eyes closed.
Morrigan.
Her name tasted too soft on his tongue. He was already too close. Too aware.
If she kept chasing him, kept digging... she'd find truths meant for no one.
And if he touched her again-
It might not just burn him.
It might burn everything.
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