Hunger beneath the moon.

Morning after.

Already, the world was beginning to stir. A distant door creaked open somewhere down the road. The faint clatter of early movement—someone rising, someone beginning their day. Soon there would be voices. Light. Eyes. Too many chances to be seen.

Kael continued running, keeping to the edges of shadow as he moved past the quiet houses and empty streets. Every step felt heavier than the last. The night had taken its toll. Not just the transformation—but the healing. It always cost him more than he wanted to admit. Each time he gave a piece of himself to undo what Azruk had done, he left something behind—something he never quite got back. But he would do it again; he always did, for he knew that the curse would never let him alone.

The road stretched ahead, long and silent, cutting through the outskirts of the town and into open land. The horizon was already softening with pale gold, the first promise of morning rising whether he was ready or not. Kael didn’t look back. He never did, because behind him were lives he could not stay in… and damage he could never fully erase. Ahead was only distance, and the slow, punishing journey home. He moved faster once the buildings fell away, slipping into the fields where mist still clung low to the ground. His figure blurred against the waking light, just another shadow retreating from the day. Villages passed at a distance; roads remained empty. The world was waking—but he stayed just ahead of it, just out of reach, as though chased by something no one else could see. Or perhaps… something he carried within.

By the time the sun finally broke over the horizon, Kael was already far from it all. Far from her, far from the place where Azruk had been, but not far enough, never far enough, for his mind would always connect him back. The physical distance was great, but his mind would forever remember it, as if he remembered the first one. But he was never far enough because, no matter how long the road, the night would come again, and when it did, he would run.

Kael woke to silence. Not the sharp, alert silence of the hunt, but the heavy kind. The kind that pressed against the walls and settled into the bones of a place that had been empty for too long. He lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling. His body ached—not just from the night before, but from something deeper. A tiredness that sleep never seemed to touch. His limbs felt heavier than they should, like they belonged to someone else. Or something else. He exhaled slowly and dragged himself upright. He was in his house, for whatever length of time he had been asleep, not more than an hour, maybe. The bed creaked under the movement, the sound echoing faintly in the large, bare room. There was too much space here. Too much emptiness.

Kael had bought the house for isolation, for distance from the world, from people. From harm, but he hadn’t expected the quiet to feel like this. Cold and endless. He ran a hand over his face and touched the faint, healing marks along his arm, wincing slightly. The skin had already closed, at a speed that was impossible for a human, but he was not totally human. Still, the soreness lingered, a dull reminder of what he had done… and what he would do again. His gaze drifted towards the window. Morning had fully arrived. Soft light spilled across the floor, warm and ordinary. Birds moved somewhere outside. Life was beginning its routine—unaware, untouched.

Kael swallowed. “Another day,” he muttered under his breath. Another day of pretending, he thought. He pushed himself to his feet and moved through the house slowly, his steps echoing against wood and empty walls. The place was large, too large for one person, but he had chosen it that way. Fewer neighbors. Fewer questions. Fewer chances to fail. The kitchen greeted him with the same quiet indifference as the rest of the house. He paused there, staring at the counter for a moment as though trying to remember what came next. Routine. He needed routine, a semblance of normalcy or something that equaled normal in the human world.

He reached for a cup, his movements automatic now, and poured himself water. He drank it in slow, steady swallows, grounding himself in the simplest act he could manage. Human! He needed to feel human, but even that felt distant. His reflection caught in the faint shine of the window. He hesitated, then stepped closer. The man staring back at him looked… worn. Dark circles beneath his eyes. Skin slightly pale. A tension in his expression that never fully left, even when he wasn’t thinking. Even when he tried not to remember.

Kael leaned closer, studying his own eyes carefully. Still his, still human, for now. His jaw tightened. “How long?” he whispered quietly. The question had no answer. It never did. How long — what? The curse, being alone, he was not even sure what he was asking. He straightened, dragging himself away from the reflection as though it might accuse him of something if he looked too long.

Because it would; it always did.

Kael moved through the rest of the house in silence—checking doors, windows, small, unnecessary things that gave him something to do. Something to focus on. The kind of tasks that fill space without requiring thought, because thinking led to memory, and memory would lead to her, to all of them. His hand paused briefly against the back of a chair. “She’ll wake up,” he said softly, almost to convince himself. “She won’t remember. She’ll be fine.” That was the only reason he kept going. The only reason he endured the nights, the running, the pain, the shame, was because if he could take away the fear, if he could stop them from breaking the way others had, then maybe—Maybe he wasn’t completely lost. The thought didn’t comfort him. Not really, but it was enough to move and enough to breathe.

Kael straightened slowly, rolling his shoulders back as if preparing himself for something far heavier than the day ahead. “Keep moving,” he muttered. Because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant facing what he had become. He grabbed his coat from the chair near the door, hesitating only a second before slipping it on. The house remained silent behind him, unchanged and empty.

Just as he had left it. Just as it would always be.

He stepped outside into the morning light, the air cool against his skin, the world already moving forward as though nothing had happened. As though nothing ever would. He took a slow breath, then another, and began his day. The coffee was bitter. Kael didn’t add anything to it—no sugar, no milk. He never did anymore. The sharp taste grounded him, gave him something real to hold onto in a world that felt increasingly distant. He stood by the window, cup in hand, eyes closed. For a moment, the house disappeared. The silence deepened, and he let himself fall inward.

"You are weaker this morning." The voice came as it always did—not heard, not spoken, but felt. Low, steady, threaded through his thoughts like something that had always been there. Kael didn’t open his eyes.

“I’m tired,” he answered quietly. You are always tired. A pause. Not mocking. Just… certain. Kael exhaled slowly, his grip tightening slightly around the cup.

“I ran further last night,” he said. “I could not control myself.”

"I know." The presence shifted—closer now, clearer. Not separate from him, not entirely. But not him either.

Azruk. Not just the beast, something older. Something that remembered more than Kael ever could.

"You tried to hold me back."

“I always do,” Kael answered.

"And you always fail," Azruk said. It was not a challenge, but it was something that the man and the beast had come to understand, but they were still unable to make peace with.

Kael’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue, because it wasn’t wrong.

The silence that followed wasn’t hostile; it was… shared. Heavy and familiar. They stood together in that quiet space of the mind, where neither fully ruled, and neither fully disappeared, and beneath everything else, there was something else: loneliness. Not just Kael’s, nor just Azruk’s, but theirs.

"We are alone," Azruk said at last. Kael’s fingers stilled.

“…I know.”

"There are no others."

The words settled like truth carved in stone, because they were; they were the last of something that had once been feared; revered, countless, powerful.

Kael’s mind drifted not willingly, but pulled into a memory that wasn’t entirely his own. A different time, a different world. Before the silence, before the emptiness, before the curse had finished its work.

“There were more,” he said quietly. “There had to be.”

"There were."

Azruk’s voice lowered, not in volume—but in weight.

"We were many." Flashes came fragmented, distant. Shadows of figures moving under moonlight, voices that no longer existed, strength that once filled the world like a second heartbeat. Then, fire, conflict. A war that tore through more than just land.

“They died,” Kael whispered. The pause lingered, longer this time.

Kael opened his eyes slowly, staring at the pale morning light.

“Because of the curse.”

It wasn’t a question. Azruk did not answer immediately. When he did, it was quieter.

"Because they could not endure it." Kael swallowed hard.

“They broke.”

"Yes." The word carried no judgment, only fact.