ALLURING : Between Two Realms

Chapter 16-The Gathering

Zehra arrived the way she always did.

Loud.

Bright.

And carrying more bags than one woman should have been able to fit into her car.

The moment she stepped through the front door, the girls attacked her with hugs, questions, and complaints all at once. She laughed through all of it, kissing their heads one by one before lifting the grocery bags higher.

"I brought steamboat," she announced.

Mom appeared from the kitchen and stared at the bags.

"Zehra."

"What?"

"How many people are you feeding?"

Zehra grinned. "Emotionally? All of us."

I laughed despite myself. For the first time that day, the house felt full in a way that did not overwhelm me.

"Girls, let your auntie rest for a bit," I said when they kept hovering around Zehra with endless questions.

"Nah, it's okay. Let them be," Zehra replied before kissing Arya's cheek. "I'll rest after our steamboat."

That was Zehra. She loved children, and children were always drawn to her cheerful energy. She used to work at a kindergarten before she moved with her husband over a year ago. Right now, she said she was on sabbatical. With her husband's job requiring a lot of outstation trips, she took the opportunity to travel back home whenever she could. Sometimes, she even followed him.

"What about asking Uncle Matt to join us tonight?" she asked Mom. "We can hang out at the backyard garden."

"Why not?" Mom said. "Auntie Sofea is out of town anyway. So dinner is served for him." Mom took out her phone and sent a message to Uncle Matt.

Arjuna POV

By the time the Human Realm fell into evening, I had tried reaching her again.

Once.

Twice.

Then a third time, though the strain had already begun to gather behind my eyes.

I found her house easily. The room. The window. The broken trace of moonstone still clinging faintly to the air.

But she was not there. Her essence was thin. Almost gone. Not hidden. Not shielded.

Absent.

My hand tightened into a fist. "Where are you?" I whispered. I tried to focus again, but a sudden mind-link interrupted me.

Aurelia.

"Brother!" Her voice came through flat. Almost puzzled. "Did you sense it?" I frowned. Sense what?

She was at one of her healer friends' homes, not far from our estate, and of course, accompanied by two bodyguards. Even though she could take care of herself, Father and Mother still insisted she bring them along. The most loyal ones to her and our family.

Just as a precaution.

"Aurelia," I said, already annoyed because she had broken my focus. "Sense what?" Sometimes, the way she spoke reminded me too much of the Seers. Too cryptic. Too late. Too inconvenient. "I sensed the Elders." I exhaled sharply. "God, Aurelia. The Elders have been here since the day we were born." "Not those Elders," she said. Her voice lowered. I went still. "What do you mean?"

"The Elders from all provinces," she answered. "North, East, West, South. I can sense all of them."

The irritation inside me vanished.

"What?"

"Why can't you sense it?" she asked, and this time, there was fear beneath her words.

I looked toward the window, toward the silver light stretching across the estate. I had been so caught up trying to reach Zattie that I had not noticed the movement in my own realm. The intrusion. The weight. The gathering. "Now you're scared, Brother?" Aurelia tried to mock me, but her voice trembled.

"Aurelia, come back to the mansion right now."

"But..."

"No buts." My voice hardened. "If all provincial Elders are here without announcement, then something is wrong."

Silence followed. Then Aurelia asked, quieter this time, "Do you think it has something to do with the disturbance?"

I did not answer immediately. Because the first thing that came to my mind was not the Elders.

It was her.

Zattie.

Her missing essence.

The faint trace of her room.

The absence that felt too much like warning.

"I'll find Father and Mother," I said. "Return home. Now."

Then I severed the mind-link.

Unknown POV

I was deep in meditation when the clair struck without warning.

It did not arrive gently. It tore through me.

One moment, I was inside my cottage, seated before the low fire with my palms resting over my knees. The next, my breath vanished as though something had dragged my soul through a vortex I could neither resist nor command.

I gasped.

My eyes opened, but the world before me was no longer mine.

Physically, I knew I remained in the cottage. My body was still there, surrounded by herbs, smoke, and the old forest that had hidden me for centuries.

But my essence had traveled.

It happened sometimes.

Without permission.

Without mercy.

There were moments when my soul slipped forward into the future, backward into the past, or into memories buried so deeply the living no longer knew they had forgotten them.

But this was different.

The sun struck my face.

Warm.

Golden.

Human.

That was how I knew I was no longer in my realm.

And not in my own timeline.

Slowly, the vision sharpened.

I stood in a small village in the Human Realm, but it was not the Human Realm as it existed now.

Everything felt older.

The air.

The soil.

The trees.

Even the silence.

Before me, beneath a large tree, sat a young woman.

She was stunning in a quiet way, soft at the edges, yet carrying something terribly heavy within her.

Grief.

Storm.

A sorrow that felt too deep for one lifetime alone.

She stared into the distance as though listening to something no one else could hear.

Then I saw the pendant on her chest.

My breath caught.

No.

My hand instinctively moved to the moldavite pendant resting against my own skin. It had never left me, not once in all these centuries. The stone was my anchor whenever an unbidden clair pulled me too far from myself.

But now, it turned warm.

Then hot.

The woman's pendant flickered once, answering mine.

A tremor moved through my entire body.

It could not be.

This was not only a memory.

It was an imprint.

A root.

Before I could step closer, before I could understand what I had seen, the vision collapsed.

The village disappeared.

The tree vanished.

The woman was gone.

I was pulled back into my body with a force that tore the air from my lungs.

I opened my eyes inside the cottage and gasped.

The fire was still burning.

The herbs still hung from the ceiling.

The forest still pressed close around my home.

But my pendant was trembling against my chest.

"Oh, God," I whispered, clutching it with one shaking hand.

I had not been pulled into the old Human Realm for centuries.

Not like that.

Not unless history itself had begun to move again.

Back to Human Realm

By evening, Mom's backyard had turned into a small family feast.

Zach helped set up the table near the garden lights while Uncle Matt arranged the chairs. The outdoor lamps had already been switched on, casting a warm glow over the grass and the vegetable beds. An extension cable ran carefully from the house to the long table so Zehra could plug in the steamboat pot.

Of course, Mom still brought out the charcoal stove.

"Just in case," she said.

Zehra looked at her. "Mom, the steamboat pot is electric."

"And electricity can betray people," Mom replied simply.

I laughed while carrying out a tray of bowls and chopsticks.

Then, because apparently one pot of steamboat and one charcoal stove were not dramatic enough, I added a small BBQ grill at the side.

Zehra clapped once. "Now this is dinner."

Zach glanced at the spread and shook his head. "This looks like we invited half the village."

"Emotionally, we did," Zehra said.

Soon, the table was filled with sliced beef, prawns, fish balls, meatballs, tofu, mushrooms, noodles, vegetables, and sauces. On the side, I placed marinated chicken and a few skewers for the grill. Mom kept checking the broth, Zehra kept rearranging the plates as though she was styling a magazine shoot, and Uncle Matt claimed the job of guarding the charcoal stove.

The girls hovered around us, excited by the bubbling pot and the smell of food cooking over fire.

"Not too close," I warned them.

"Mommy, can I put this in?" Arya asked, holding up a fish ball with full seriousness.

"Slowly," I said, guiding her hand. "And don't splash."

Maya wanted prawns. Hanna wanted noodles. Arya changed her mind three times before deciding she wanted everything.

It was loud.

Messy.

Warm.

And somehow, I did not feel suffocated by it.

Maybe because this noise had love in it.

Maybe because, for once, I was not carrying everything alone.

The broth bubbled in the middle of the table while smoke from the charcoal stove curled into the evening air. The garden lights glowed softly above us, and the smell of grilled chicken mixed with soup, herbs, and rain-damp soil.

For a moment, everything felt almost perfect.

Then the steam rose higher.

Thicker.

The laughter around me softened, as though someone had lowered the volume of the world.

I blinked.

Inside the steam, I saw two silhouettes.

One stood in darkness, restless and burning.

The other stood beneath silver light, still as an ancient blade.

My breath caught.

Then the vision vanished.

The backyard returned all at once.

Zehra was laughing at Uncle Matt for burning one side of the chicken.

Mom was scolding Zach for eating straight from the grill.

The girls were arguing over meatballs.

Everything was normal again.

Too normal.

I lowered my gaze and touched the pendant beneath my shirt.

It was warm.

Not burning.

Not pulsing.

Only warm enough to remind me that something had seen me back.

I looked around the table at my family gathered beneath the garden lights, eating and laughing as though the world outside had not begun shifting without our permission.

For a moment, I wanted to stay there forever.

In the steam.

In the smoke.

In the warmth.

But somewhere deep inside me, beneath the comfort and laughter, I felt it.

Other things were gathering too.

Things I could not name yet.