Chapter 2
The sky ripped open above us, like reality itself had split in two.
A jagged maw of darkness yawned overhead, and Ed’s hand clamped onto mine so hard my knuckles turned white.
Oh God, oh shit, I could hardly breathe as the void widened, a ravenous hole devouring every star, dragging gravity with it.
The ground trembled, a deep, guttural growl vibrating through my bones.
I’d survived California quakes—rollers and rumblers that made you hold your breath—but this was pure apocalypse shit: earthquake, hurricane, volcanic rage all rolled into one.
The streets underneath our feet cracked, buildings groaned like dying beasts, and the air buzzed in my ears, high-pitched and relentless.
Ed shouted—I saw his lips move—but the roar of the fracture swallowed it whole.
A violent buck threw him backward, forcing our fingers apart.
“Ed!” I screamed, lunging for him, but the world tilted, flinging me up and away.
My body floated free, untethered, as if gravity had given up on me entirely.
“Ed!” My voice cracked, raw and desperate, as I reached for his retreating form—just fingertips away—before the black hole’s pull yanked us apart. His eyes widened in terror, then vanished.
Suddenly, I was alone, spiraling into absolute darkness. The city, the ground, even the sky—everything faded into nothing. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. And yet I knew I was moving, drifting through an endless, silent void.
No ground. No sky. Just infinite black pressing in on every side.
My pulse thundered in my ears, but there was no echo, no reassurance—only the sensation of falling and floating at once.
A strangled, hysterical laugh bubbled up.
“This is it,” I whispered, disbelief lacing every word.
I must be dead. The afterlife was a yawning abyss—cold, empty, final.
And yet… it felt strangely peaceful. Like the universe exhaled, and I rode the sigh.
My chest rose and fell, breathing air that couldn’t exist here.
The panic receded into awe. This was what space looked like in movies—vast, silent, majestic—only without the glass of a ship or the hum of engines around to ensure my safety.
I drifted, weightless, until the blackness fractured into shapes: planets, dozens of them, floating like marbles in a cosmic pool. Moons circled them in ghostly silence. No stars. No suns. Just these worlds adrift in a lightless sea.
My stomach lurched. I studied ruins for a living—traces of tragedies past—but this was the aftermath of existence itself. And then my eyes locked on one sphere: a glowing violet orb streaked with pale clouds, mesmerizingly—agonizingly—beautiful.
I reached toward it, my fingertips itching to touch that impossible vision.
Tears threatened. Around me, wonder and horror tangled so tightly I couldn’t tell which was which.
I was breathing, and yet I was not. I didn't think it was air filling my lungs, and yet I didn't feel deprived.
Neither did I feel the cold that I was supposed to in space.
Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, defied all the physics I had ever learned.
A glimmer cracked the void, a pinpoint at first, then a scorching streak of molten gold arced straight at me. My chest seized. No! No fucking way. I jerked sideways; all of my instincts were screaming at me to escape the comet.
My gaze flicked back to the purple world, and a mad thought ran through me: maybe I could dive into it and hide there.
I stared, pouring every ounce of desperate hope into my look, and, to my utter astonishment, the planet obeyed.
It surged toward me as if pulled by an invisible cord—or was I surging toward it?
I couldn't tell—it grew larger until it filled my entire vision.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. What about atmospheres? It was too late now, though, and hadn't I already gone through one when I was pushed out here, wherever here was? Well, wherever here was, it didn't seem like they'd heard of Newton, Einstein, or Hawking. Or here simply didn't care.
Either way, I didn't feel any impact —only a shift, like jumping on a trampoline.
The darkness fell away, replaced by something warm and alive.
My bare feet sank into lush, spongy moss.
Damp air hit my lungs, heady with scents of wet dirt and alien blooms. I blinked, stunned, surrounded by a violet-tinged jungle beneath a canopy that shimmered like fractured starlight.
Giant vines the thickness of tree trunks coiled overhead, leaves edged in silver. Enormous flowers pulsed with soft luminescence, opening and closing as if breathing. My heart pounded so hard I thought it might burst, still reeling from the sight of that golden arrow slicing the void.
This wasn’t Earth. This wasn’t Heaven. It was something in between, a realm my mind had no map for.
Or maybe I was dying, and my mind made it up.
Even if that were the case, I would have expected an ancient landscape, not an alien jungle.
I'd never been into sci-fi movies, so if this was something my mind conjured, then—.
A thunderous crash rent the air, stopping my thoughts dead.
I whipped around just as a fiery projectile slammed into the ground at my side, sending shockwaves through the jungle.
Leaves shivered; vines recoiled. My breath caught in my throat.
He was there…
For one impossible heartbeat, I thought I was looking at an angel.
His entire body glowed with a molten-gold aura; the glow spilled over his muscles, which looked like they had been carved from living marble.
His broad shoulders strained against a black uniform that was cut to fit him like a second skin, the kind of severe lines that screamed soldier.
Power. Control. Every part of him was built to dominate the space around him.
Totally, exactly, unfairly, my type.
His face was all angles, sharp cheekbones, a jaw carved with infuriating precision, a mouth made for both commands and sins. And his hair, brown shot through with gold, as though the light itself had gotten tangled in the strands.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I could only stare until his eyes found mine; only then did the air leave my lungs.
His eyes were pitch-black pools, endless as the void we’d fled—but not cold like the Cryons’. His were filled with fire and ache, violence and longing.
Though I didn’t know how, I knew they burned with wars he’d fought and desires he’d never let himself win. I felt my skin prickle, and my stomach curdle.
Maybe he was an angel.
But if so, he’d fallen. And damn, he terrified me.
I stood frozen, my heart hammering in my chest, and for a moment, he only watched me. That terrible, beautiful glow of his flickered against the violet jungle, gold devouring purple until there was nothing left but him.
“Well,” his voice rolled out smooth and low, but with a razor’s bite beneath, “what do we have here?”
He spoke a language I had never heard before, and yet I understood him thanks to the translator chip the Cryons had forced into my brain.
The sound of it coiled through me, warm and dangerous, like he’d already decided I belonged to him.
I swallowed, but my throat was dry. Words clung to my tongue, uselessly.
He was too much: too solid, too alive, too impossible to exist in the middle of a dead world.
He stepped closer. The ground shivered under his weight.
“You shouldn’t be here.” His head tilted, golden-brown hair shifting with the movement. “No being survives the pull of Nox Eternum. And yet…” His black eyes dragged over me, leaving my skin raw. “Here you are.”
Every instinct screamed at me to run, but my legs wouldn’t obey. I’d faced the Cryons with their cold efficiency, watched their ships swallow my world, but this man—this thing—was worse. Because he wasn’t indifferent.
He was interested. And I had no idea if that made me lucky or already dead. My body screamed at me to back away, to put as much distance as possible between myself and this golden monster. But I couldn’t.
He terrified me, yes, but he fascinated me more.
Was he a demon? The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it stirred something warm and reckless in my chest. Why was I so drawn to him, drawn as if we were two halves finally finding each other across centuries?
This pull between us felt like destiny, a gravity older than names. He radiated danger and power, yes, but beneath it was a tenderness that felt like a promise. My mind insisted he couldn’t be real. No man should look like that. No man should move like that.
An angel, perhaps. Or a devil born from light—one my soul had been waiting for.
My hand twitched at my side, and the absurd urge to reach out and touch him rushed through me. To test if he was flesh and bone or nothing more than a hallucination conjured by my dying brain. But then the force of him pressed against me like a storm, and I knew he was very much alive.
Alive, and watching me like a lion studies a gazelle.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Every muscle locked while his gaze held me there; his black eyes glittered with something unreadable. My chest rose and fell too fast, like the gazelle’s, begging the predator not to pounce. Not to devour me.
And yet… I couldn’t look away. His movements were too fluid, too graceful, every step deliberate—every flicker of golden light from him bent the jungle around him.
I should’ve been praying for rescue. Instead, I was caught in the sick truth that if he struck, part of me wanted to feel it, wanted to know what it meant to be touched by something like him.
He was terror. He was awe.
And against every shred of my better judgment, I wanted him.
There was a magnetic pull in me that I was trying hard to fight. I didn't want to be attracted to him; I didn't want to be pulled into his orbit. All I wanted was to run. But where?
I ran here, if how I got here could be called that. But he had found me with an uncanny ease, and part of me already knew he could do so again if he wished. So I stood there, staring at him, studying him, wondering.
He was the first to reach out; his hand moved toward me.
My mind screamed at me to back away, but my body was frozen —it actually craved his touch.
It seemed to take forever and no time at all before his fingers gently brushed over the skin on my cheek.
A shiver moved through me, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant.
No, I'm lying, it was anything but unpleasant.
It took an effort on my part not to lean into his touch.
It was warm, soft, and, against all odds, reassuring.
His fingers lingered on my skin, a trail of fire, and then his voice shattered the moment. “You,” he said, low and dangerous, “should not exist here.”
His eyes narrowed, blacker than the void that had swallowed the planet. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you know what it cost me to find you?”
I blinked, thrown by the accusation. “Me?”
His hand dropped, and a curl of disdain twisted his mouth.
“Yes, you. I was at the edge of the Dark Abyss, holding back an enemy that would flay this universe alive, and instead, I was dragged here. To you.” He paced a half-circle around me, his golden light brushing the vines back as though even the jungle bent to him.
It began to flicker, going from pure gold to more of a rose gold.
“Your presence ripped through the pull of Rotodex’s death and tore me from my duty. ”
I stared at him, unsuccessfully holding back the heat rushing to my face. He made it sound like I’d invited him here, like I’d called him across that abyss.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I snapped. My voice cracked more from fear than anger, but he didn't need to know that.
“No,” he agreed, mocking, “you didn’t ask. But you are the reason.” His gaze raked over me again, dark and merciless. “The balance. The fracture. My chains.” He let the last words drip with venom, like my existence itself was a betrayal, a curse.
The warmth of his touch still lingered on my cheek, mocking me as much as his words. Something inside me snapped. I jabbed a finger into his chest—hard enough that it stung my hand—and glared up at him. “Don’t you dare put this on me.”
My voice shook, not with fear but with fury now, the kind that had been clawing its way up my throat since the day the Cryons tore me from Earth.
“You want to talk about chains?” My finger jabbed him again.
“Try being kidnapped off your own planet, dragged onto a spaceship like luggage, and sold at an auction. Try standing next to a hundred strangers on a world you didn’t ask to see, wondering what disgusting reason you’ve been chosen for.
” My breath came ragged, words tumbling over each other, each one hotter than the last. “And now I’m here, on this—whatever this place is—and I still don’t know why. ”
I shoved at his chest, furious at how solid he felt, how immovable. “So, forgive me if I don’t feel sorry for you, Mr. Golden-Glow. For all I know, it was you who summoned me here!”
The words echoed in the jungle, too loud, too raw.
I didn’t know where the anger was coming from—grief, terror, exhaustion—but I had never felt it burn this hot.
I wanted to pummel him, to drive my fists into his perfect chest, to slap that infuriatingly handsome face until it wasn’t handsome anymore.
I wanted to kick his carved-from-stone legs out from under him and damn him for existing at all.
Damn him for being so dangerously, unfairly, beautiful.