Sarafina POV
The walk home from the Night Market felt wrong.
Not dangerous.
Just… tilted, like the world was two degrees off-center and vibrating under my skin.
The orb Vesper had "loaned" me was tucked inside my bag, wrapped in a scarf, but I could still feel it pulsing, slow, steady, like a heartbeat that wasn't mine.
And behind me, like always, something watched.
I didn't turn.
I already knew that cold gravity in the air.
Alistair.
He hadn't said a single word as I left the Market. He just fell into step several paces behind, silent enough to be a rumor.
When I reached the park near my street, the small one with rusted swings and a single flickering lamp, I finally stopped.
"You can come out of the shadows," I called quietly. "The dramatic brooding is… a bit much."
A soft rustle answered me.
Then he stepped into the glow of the lamp.
Alistair looked carved from night itself, coat dark, eyes unreadable, expression a calm that felt like a mask he'd perfected over a very long time.
He didn't come closer.
Just studied me, gaze flicking to the hand clutching my bag.
"You shouldn't have taken it," he said.
Not even a greeting.
I rolled my eyes. "Hello to you too."
He didn't return the humor, but something in his jaw tightened. "Sarafina. That artifact, it's dangerous."
"Everything down there is dangerous."
"This is worse."
I crossed my arms. "Funny. Vesper said the exact opposite."
His eyes darkened, a storm brewing. "And you trust him?"
"I don't trust you either," I shot back. "At least he doesn't break into my house."
His silence cut sharper than a blade.
The swing chains clinked behind me as a cold breeze passed through. The lamp flickered once. Twice.
Alistair's voice dropped. "He gave you that orb for a reason. A reason he didn't tell you."
"And you do know the reason?" I challenged.
A muscle jumped in his cheek.
He didn't deny it.
He stepped closer, too slowly for threat, too controlled for comfort. Like he was afraid to get too near.
"I saw what it did to you," he said quietly. "Your pulse shifted. Your energy flared. The conduit recognized you before you recognized yourself."
Hearing it out loud made my stomach twist.
"Recognized me from what?"
He didn't answer.
Of course he didn't.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Maybe Vesper is dramatic, but at least he gives answers. You just drop warnings like you're reading from a script."
"Sarafina…."
"And stop saying my name like it's a sin you want to confess."
That got him.
His eyes flicked up sharply, and for one breath, his mask cracked, just a little—revealing something wild behind it.
"Tell me what it showed you," he said.
My grip on the strap of my bag tightened. "Why?"
"Because something is coming. And every single vision you have, every shimmer in your veins is a step closer to—"
He cut himself off.
I stepped closer. "To what?"
To my surprise, he actually flinched backward. Just half an inch. But enough to feel like I'd stepped over some invisible line around him.
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"To losing you."
The world stilled.
For a second, I forgot how to breathe.
"That's… a strange thing to say to someone you barely know," I managed, heart hammering.
"I know enough."
Silence stretched between us—thick, heavy, electric.
Then the lamp overhead sputtered violently, buzzing like it was trying to warn us.
A shape shifted at the park's edge. A stranger. Or maybe not a stranger at all. I felt his gaze before I saw him—thin, cloaked, leaning unnaturally still against a tree.
The same kind of wrongness as the alley attacker.
Alistair noticed at the exact same moment I did.
His eyes snapped to the figure, and for a heartbeat, his pupils thinned—predator-sharp.
The cloaked man whispered, voice scraping like broken glass:
"Starlight."
My blood froze.
Alistair moved without hesitation—stepping in front of me, body angled like a shield.
The figure tilted his head, ignoring Alistair completely.
"She wakes," the stranger murmured. "Her blood is stirring."
"Leave," Alistair commanded, voice cold enough to burn.
The man didn't move. "Not yet. She needs to hear it."
I grabbed Alistair's sleeve. "What is he talking about?"
The stranger's laugh slid across the air like oil. "The veil grows thin around you, girl. Soon, it will tear."
Alistair took a step forward—the air around him humming with restrained violence.
"Run," he told me softly.
"I'm not leaving you here with that—"
"Sarafina." His voice sharpened. "Run."
The cloaked man's head snapped toward Alistair, and something flickered in the darkness behind him—shadows coiling like black smoke.
I didn't run.
Instead, I took a shaky step backward, eyes darting between them.
The strange man whispered, "The prophecy stirs. The star-veins awaken. And the hybrid beside you…."
Alistair was on him in less than a breath.
The shadows erupted.
The world blurred.
And all I could think—heart slamming against my ribs—was one impossible question:
Hybrid?
Alistair wasn't human.
And now I wasn't sure what that made ME either.