Prologue 2 Dagan
Years Later, New Jersey, Earth Realm
I’m in some shitty industrial park at the edge of a marsh, midnight has just tolled.
The human realm smells wrong.
Too much metal. Too much oil. Not enough stone.
Concrete and rebar and asphalt stretch in every direction, pretending to be solid, pretending to be permanent.
Underneath, the earth is riddled with fractures—tiny, jagged lines where Nightfall’s pain has started to bleed through.
I walk unseen.
A glamour borrowed from Alaric hides my wings and my eyes that glow when I’m careless.
To these humans, I’m just another tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark coat, boots heavy on the cracked pavement.
They don’t see the way the streetlights flicker when I pass. They don’t feel the way the ground settles under my step, relieved to be acknowledged.
But I feel everything.
Every tremor that doesn’t belong to this world.
Every shiver that whispers of SoulTaker corruption trying to chew through the dimensional seams.
Alaric, Kael, and Thorne told me to come here.
“Look for a viyella in New Jersey,” they said, like it was that simple.
Like you could just drop into a random patch of mortal rot and trip over a fate-chosen mate.
I scoffed.
I still scoff.
Most days.
Tonight, the air tastes different.
I find myself at the edge of a fenced-off construction site, watching as the earth heaves in slow, pained jolts.
Fresh cracks spider out from a central fault, a thin plume of steam rising where it opens to the cool night air.
Nightfall’s wounds.
Here.
On this world.
I crouch and press my palm to the broken asphalt. The ground shudders and answers me—tired, strained, trying so damn hard to hold.
“Easy,” I murmur. “You’re not alone.”
The earth calms under my touch.
But the crack doesn’t seal.
SoulTaker taint is stubborn like that. It festers.
“You shouldn’t be there,” a voice says behind me.
Female. Sharp. Annoyed.
“That fault’s still active.”
I go still.
Slowly, I rise and turn.
And there she is.
Headlamp. Reflective vest. Work boots splattered with mud and god-knows-what from the marsh.
A tablet tucked under one arm, a field notebook in the other.
Dark hair pulled into a no-nonsense braid.
Eyes like rich, fertile soil—deep brown, steady, assessing me like I’m the hazard here.
Bronze skinned and curves for miles.
She sees the crack first.
Then my hand.
Then my face.
Her brows knit.
“You with the survey crew?” she asks. “Because if you’re not, you’re trespassing on an unstable substrate and about five minutes away from a twisted ankle and a lawsuit.”
I just stare.
The earth under my feet goes quiet.
Shockingly, blessedly quiet.
As if the realm itself is holding its breath.
She huffs when I don’t answer fast enough, marching closer, boots crunching over broken pavement. She doesn’t flinch at the fault line.
Doesn’t hesitate when it groans under her weight.
Solid. Steady. Grounded.
“Okay, Big Guy,” she says, waving a hand in front of my face. “Do you speak? Or are you just here to commune with the asphalt?”
My lips twitch.
“I speak,” I say, and my voice comes out lower than I intend.
Rough with more than just disuse.
Her eyes flick up to mine.
Something sparks between us—sharp and bright and undeniable. It shoots down my spine, into the ground, and the cracked earth hums like it recognizes her.
No, not like it recognizes her.
Because it does.
Holy. Fucking. Hell.
Alaric’s words echo in my head.
Try New Jersey.
Those bastards.
Of all the improbable places in all the worlds, they were right.
Because as I stand there in the stink of human exhaust and marsh rot, looking at this stubborn, brilliant, utterly unafraid woman glaring up at me like I’m in her way—for the first time since the Prime fell, something in my stone heart moves.
It cracks.
And I think—Oh. There you are.