Before the darkness
1083 Words
Six years earlier.
The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. It drummed softly against the windows of Crescent Academy, turning the campus into a watercolor of gray skies and dripping rooftops. Inside, students hurried through the halls, their laughter echoing through the marble corridors.
Chloe Lee sat by the window of the library, chin propped on her hand, pretending to read. Her uniform—crisp white shirt, pleated skirt, and a ribbon that kept slipping from her neck—was immaculate, as always. But her thoughts were miles away.
Outside, the cherry trees swayed in the wind, their blossoms scattered like tiny pink ghosts. Chloe always liked spring. It made her feel like the world could start over.
“Miss Lee,” a voice interrupted, low and hesitant. “You’re sitting in my spot.”
She looked up, startled. A boy stood beside her table. He wasn’t tall yet—maybe sixteen—but his posture carried a quiet confidence, the kind that didn’t need to shout. His hair was dark and unruly, his uniform slightly disheveled. But it was his eyes that caught her breath.
Blue. Bright, sharp blue.
“Your spot?” she repeated, tilting her head. “I didn’t see your name on it.”
The boy’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “There doesn’t need to be one.”
“Maybe you should get one then,” Chloe replied, returning to her book though she hadn’t turned a page in ten minutes.
He didn’t leave. Instead, he pulled out the chair across from her and sat down, dropping a heavy physics textbook onto the table. The faint scent of rain clung to him.
Chloe tried to ignore him. She really did. But curiosity was a stubborn thing. “You’re new,” she said finally.
He glanced up. “And you’re observant.”
She frowned. “You’re also rude.”
“Dorian Xu,” he said simply, extending a hand.
She stared at it, uncertain, then shook it. “Chloe Lee.”
“I know.”
Her brows furrowed. “You know?”
“Everyone knows the Lee family,” he said, flipping a page without looking at her. “You’re kind of famous here.”
She grimaced. “Lucky me.”
Dorian’s gaze flicked up again. “You don’t like attention?”
“I don’t like people who think they know me because of my last name.”
For a second, something softened in his eyes, but it vanished just as quickly. “Then maybe we’re the same.”
She wanted to ask what he meant, but before she could, the bell rang. Students began filing out, voices rising like birds after a storm.
Chloe gathered her books and hesitated. “You really think this is your spot?”
He smirked. “It was. Now I guess we’ll share.”
She rolled her eyes but couldn’t help smiling as she walked away.
That was how it started—the quiet, unlikely friendship between Chloe Lee, the heiress who felt invisible, and Dorian Xu, the boy who wore silence like a second skin.
---
In the weeks that followed, they met there often. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they didn’t. Chloe found comfort in Dorian’s stillness—it was steady, unshakable, a contrast to her noisy world of expectations.
He never asked her to be perfect. He never asked her to smile.
One afternoon, as the sun spilled gold across the floor, Chloe asked, “Why do you always sit here?”
“Because it’s quiet,” he said. “And because no one pretends here.”
She studied him. “You talk like an old man.”
He almost laughed. “You sound like my father.”
That made her grin. “Maybe I should meet him.”
“You don’t want to.” His voice went flat so suddenly that she froze. There was a darkness in his tone she hadn’t heard before.
She wanted to ask, but the look in his eyes stopped her. Some walls weren’t meant to be climbed.
Instead, she said softly, “You can sit here even when I’m gone.”
He looked at her then, really looked, as though she had said something dangerous. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispered. “Nothing good lasts forever.”
It was a strange thing for a fifteen-year-old girl to say, but Dorian didn’t argue. Maybe he already knew what it meant to lose things.
---
The day it all changed was the day the curse awoke for the first time.
A week before graduation, Chloe was cornered behind the gym by a senior boy named Ethan Cho. He had been charming for months—flowers, notes, endless compliments. Chloe had liked him. Or thought she did.
Until that day.
“Ethan, stop,” she said, shoving at his chest as he leaned closer. “I said stop!”
But he didn’t listen. His hands gripped her wrists, too tight, and his breath smelled like cheap liquor.
Before she could scream, there was a blur of motion. Ethan was yanked backward, slammed into the wall so hard the plaster cracked.
Dorian stood between them, his knuckles white, eyes burning ice.
“If you ever touch her again,” he said softly, terrifyingly calm, “I’ll break more than your nose.”
Ethan scrambled away, clutching his bleeding face. Dorian didn’t chase him. He just turned to Chloe, chest heaving.
“You okay?”
She nodded, though her lips trembled. “You didn’t have to—”
“Yes, I did.” His voice broke, barely above a whisper. “He would’ve hurt you.”
Something in her heart twisted. Gratitude. Guilt. Fear. She stepped closer, reached for his hand—then stopped.
A sharp wind cut through the air, cold and wrong. The cherry trees shuddered though there was no breeze. Dorian froze.
“Chloe,” he murmured. “What’s happening?”
Her chest tightened. A strange energy prickled at her fingertips, ancient and alive. It pulsed once—twice—then vanished, leaving only silence.
The next morning, Ethan Cho was found in his dorm room, unconscious, covered in scratches shaped like thorned vines. He woke screaming her name.
Chloe never saw Dorian again after that day. He left the academy without a word.
And the next time they met, years later, he wasn’t the quiet boy with blue eyes anymore. He was the devil everyone feared.
---
- Writer
