Chapter 4

Beacon's Light

Evelyn woke with a heavy, throbbing ache behind her eyes that felt like her skull was going to split in two. Exhausted as she was, her stiff neck throbbed from the agonizingly uncomfortable sleeping position she'd been stuck in after she was done bandaging his injury.

She winced, slowly raising a hand to rub at the knot in her shoulder. She had fallen asleep right beside him, unable to force herself to go to her bedroom while a giant, bleeding stranger occupied her living room.

When her eyes finally adjusted to the soft morning light filtering through her blinds, her heart skipped a beat.

Auberon was still lying on the sofa—but he was awake.

He lay completely motionless, his long body stretched across the worn, damp fabric. His chest rose and fell in slow, deliberate breaths. But his head was turned toward her, and those dark, molten-lead eyes were wide open, tracking her every movement with unsettling sharpness.

The dark purple shadow that had reached his neck had faded into faint, dark bruising, but his skin was still deathly pale. Under the harsh daylight, the sharp angles of his cheekbones and the surreal silver of his hair made him look less like a man and more like an ancient statue carved from marble.

For a long, quiet moment, neither of them said a word. The only sound in the small apartment was the low hum of her refrigerator and the distant city traffic outside.

"You're awake," Evelyn finally breathed, her voice raspy with sleep.

Auberon didn't answer right away. His eyes slowly drifted from her face down to her throat, and then to the floor beside her chair, locking onto the silver chain lying on the hardwood.

His heavy brow furrowed. The liquid gray of his eyes swirled with sudden, intense recognition.

"Auberon... and where did you get that?" he asked softly.

Evelyn stared at him, completely baffled. He actually spoke in English? So he had understood what she was saying last night?

Blinking slowly, she tried to process the shock before answering softly, "It... it belonged to my grandmother."

Auberon didn't answer at first. His gaze remained pinned on the silver filigree, his chest heaving with quiet, strained effort. Then, his eyes lifted back to hers, utterly serious.

"Is this... Liberia?"

Evelyn stared at him, bewildered.

"Liberia?" she repeated, her voice cracking slightly. "You mean the country in Africa? No! This is New York. Wait... did you think I said 'Liberia' last night when I told you I was a librarian?"

Evelyn almost laughed—the sheer absurdity of a six-foot-four, otherworldly regal king looking so profoundly, seriously lost made his stern face almost look funny.

He stared at her, dumbfounded, his dark brows pulled together tight enough to crease his pale forehead. Then, catching her amused expression, he cleared his throat with a stiff, formal dignity that only made the moment better.

"Then you are Soliram, perhaps?" he mused softly, his low voice dropping as he looked around her cramped living room. "Are we in... Solinore?"

The latter question was clearly spoken more to himself than to her, his molten-lead eyes scanning the pop-culture posters on her wall, the wooden coffee table, and the glowing digital display of her microwave in the kitchen corner like they were alien artifacts.

"I don't know what a Soliram or Solinore is," Evelyn said gently, resting her hands on her knees. "You're in my apartment. In Brooklyn. On Earth."

Auberon closed his eyes for a long moment, letting out a faint, painful exhale. "Earth," he repeated, the word sounding foreign and heavy on his tongue. "A realm without mana. A graveyard of wild power."

When he opened his eyes again, the confusion had faded, replaced by that lethal, laser-focused intensity.

His gaze locked back onto the silver necklace lying on the floor between them.

"The woman who wore that," Auberon said, his voice dropping an octave, dead serious. "Your grandmother. What was her name?"

Evelyn hesitated, her hand hovering instinctively near the chain. "Why?"

"Because that silver work was forged in the royal armories of House Vaelorian," Auberon rasped, attempting to sit up. He winced sharply, a low hiss escaping his teeth as his muscles pulled against his raw wound, but he forced himself upright anyway.

He swung his long legs over the side of the sofa, leaning forward to look directly into her eyes. "Only three such crests were ever permitted to cross the veil into mortal realms. If your blood carries her line... then you are not just a 'librarian,' human. And we are in far more danger than you realize."

Evelyn's short, disbelieving laugh echoed in the quiet room. "Wait, what? What danger? I'm a human, and there's no such thing as magic and stuff here."

Auberon didn't laugh. His gaze slowly broke from hers to scan her home once more.

It was a cozy, modern, wood-inspired apartment—rich oak flooring, warm timber bookshelves lining the walls, minimalist pine furniture, and clean geometric lines. It was a style of architecture he had never encountered in all his centuries. Not in the grand marble towers of House Vaelorian, and certainly not in Solerion, the ancient realm of men.

He looked back at her, his molten-lead eyes heavy with a strange, sobering curiosity.

"So..." he said slowly, his deep voice lingering over the word. "You call yourselves humans?"

Evelyn blinked, her skepticism wavering just a fraction under his intense scrutiny. "Yes? That's kind of the species default around here."

Auberon leaned back against the sofa cushions, a faint, humorless smile touching his lips.

"In my world, the realm of Solerion was built by men," he said softly, gesturing toward her wooden bookshelves. "They forged iron, built vast stone fortresses, and laid claim to the grand valleys. But even the humblest mortal tailor in Solerion knew the taste of mana in the air. They knew the danger of shadow magic, and they knew to bow their heads when the High Elves walked among them."

He looked directly into her eyes, his tone dropping into a deadly serious register.

"Yet you stand here in a kingdom of wood and glass, holding a forged artifact of my royal house, completely blind to the arcana that pulses beneath your own skin. You believe magic is a story for children... because your world was starved of it."

He gestured faintly toward the silver necklace on the floor.

"When I used my remaining light to seal my wound last night, your crest woke up. It sang in response to my magic, human. And in the dark between worlds, a flare like that is a beacon."

Evelyn's breath hitched. She looked down at the necklace lying harmlessly on her rug, then back at his grave face.

"A... beacon?" she whispered. "For what?"

Auberon let out a long, heavy sigh of resignation, his shoulders sinking as he rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Are you all uneducated in this realm?"

Evelyn stared at him, mortified. The sheer audacity of a bleeding, half-naked alien king crashing on her couch and calling her uneducated—a woman with a Master's degree in Library and Information Science—made her cheeks flush hot with anger.

"It is a different world!" she shot back defensively, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "We built skyscrapers, cured diseases with science, and sent people to the moon! Just because we don't shoot purple sparks out of our fingers doesn't mean we're stupid!"

Auberon raised a pale eyebrow, entirely unfazed by her outburst, though a flicker of genuine intrigue crossed his features at her words. Moon? Skyscrapers?

"I did not say you were stupid, human," he replied smoothly, though his voice was dry as bone. "I said you were uneducated in the ways of the void. In my realm, a child of five knows that when an artifact wakes, the things hunting it can see the light. You do not know because no one was here to teach you."

Her anger hadn't fully faded, but being called clueless stung more than she wanted to admit. "Enlighten me, then," she said, crossing her arms.

He gestured toward the door.

"Tell me, 'librarian'... if a hunter tracks a trail of blood through a dark forest, does he stop searching just because the deer thinks the forest is safe?"

Evelyn opened her mouth to snap another retort, but the words died in her throat. The cold, logical weight of his question hung in the quiet apartment. She looked from Auberon's deadly serious face to the silver necklace on the floor, then back to her heavy front door.

"You're saying... whoever stabbed you... might have followed that flash of light here?" she asked, her defensive fire instantly replaced by a cold knot of dread in her stomach.

"Not might," Auberon corrected softly, his molten-lead eyes darkening. "If Elden sent his Shadow-Stalkers after me into the rift... they are already searching."