Selene’s Eyes

Kael didn't go home.

He couldn't.

Not with that… thing still etched in his memory. The black-eyed creature that tried to claw out his throat. The way it vanished in a burst of azure fire that shouldn't exist in this world. The way his body had moved—fluid, perfect, deadly.

He didn't understand it.

But someone else might.

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10:22 a.m. – Selene Navarro's Clinic, Under River Street

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The door was unmarked.

Not hidden, just ignored. A crumbling iron frame tucked between an abandoned laundromat and a broken noodle shop on the south end of River Street. Kael stood there for a moment, unsure, hand hovering just over the handle.

He'd followed her here. Not because he was stalking her, exactly, but because Selene Navarro had seen something in him no one else had. She'd known he was changing. And she hadn't run.

That counted for something.

He knocked. Once. Twice.

Nothing.

Then, just as he turned to leave, the door clicked open.

"Get in," a voice said. "Before something hungrier than me smells you out."

Kael stepped inside.

The door slammed shut behind him.

The interior was dim, lit by lanterns burning a cold blue light. The walls were brick, patched in places with salvaged metal, and the air smelled of incense, oil, and something herbal Kael couldn't place.

Selene stood barefoot on a rug in the center of the room, crossbow slung over her back, sleeves rolled to her elbows. She looked tired, but alert. Always alert. Like a coiled wire waiting to snap.

Kael tried to speak.

She held up a finger.

"Sit," she said. "Talk after."

He hesitated, then dropped into the wooden chair by the side wall. Selene moved to a shelf and grabbed a glass vial of silver powder. She poured a line of it in a circle around him and lit the end with a match.

The powder ignited silently, burning violet and blue.

"Wards," she said. "Now we can talk."

Kael exhaled, still tense. "What… was that thing?"

"A shadeborn. Or a fragment of one. A leftover from the Rift Era."

"I don't know what that means."

Selene knelt across from him, arms resting on her knees. "Don't worry. Most people don't. Not until it's trying to eat their face."

He managed a weak laugh. "So this… happens often?"

"No." She stared at him. "That's the problem."

Kael met her gaze. "You said you see things. What does that mean? Who are you?"

Selene smirked. "You're asking the wrong questions, Flameboy. Try this instead: Who are you?"

"I'm..." He stopped.

Was he still Kael Morgan?

Or was that just the name the world had given him before the truth caught up?

"I don't know," he admitted.

She nodded, like she'd expected that answer.

"You're waking up. You've probably felt it for weeks. Dreams. Visions. Muscle memory that doesn't belong to you. Fire that doesn't burn you. Language you didn't learn."

He stared. "How do you know all that?"

"Because I've helped others through it." She stood. "You're not the first. Won't be the last."

Kael rose to his feet, voice sharp. "What the hell is this, Selene? What's happening to me?"

She turned, expression unreadable. "You're remembering. That's all. You died somewhere far away. In another life, another era. Maybe even another realm. But your soul didn't rest. It came back, drifting, searching for a vessel."

She tapped his chest. "It found you."

Kael took a shaky breath. "So I'm… possessed?"

"No. You are the soul. The body's new, that's all." Selene tilted her head. "And judging by how easily you flicked that thing into oblivion this morning, you were someone dangerous."

He nodded slowly. "Azuran. That name keeps echoing."

Selene flinched. Just barely.

"You remember that name?"

"Yes. Why?"

She didn't answer right away. Instead, she turned and walked to a low cabinet near the far wall. From it, she retrieved a small lockbox covered in sigils. She opened it with a key hung around her neck and pulled out a folded parchment—yellowed with age, drawn in precise, ancient lines.

She spread it on the table between them.

Kael stared.

It was a sigil map—a tracking chart used by Spirit Walkers. Symbols flared in tiny glowing nodes across the country, forming a constellation of activity.

One symbol pulsed brighter than the rest. A flame.

Selene pointed to it. "That's you."

He looked at her. "What does it mean?"

She met his eyes. "It means you're the first full flame signal to show up in this hemisphere in over two hundred years. It means you're not just some reincarnated punk with a few tricks. You're a sovereign soul and the world just felt you wake up."

Kael's throat went dry.

"Now," Selene added, rolling up the parchment, "every dormant cult, dead sect, and memory-feeding horror from the old war is going to start sniffing around to see if you're real."

She threw the parchment back in the box and shut it tight.

"Congratulations. You just became the biggest walking target in North America."

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Elsewhere – Salt Flats, Utah

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The man walked barefoot across the salt like it was silk.

His robes were white and gold, but dusted with ash. His eyes were closed. Around him, wind curled like lazy serpents, never touching his skin.

He stopped at a crack in the earth. Bent down.

Ash. Blue ash. Not natural.

He reached out, pinched some between his fingers, lifted it to his mouth, and tasted it.

"Azure flame," he murmured.

A second figure emerged from behind a nearby rock formation. This one was all black leather, helmeted, voice flat.

"He's here?"

The man nodded. "Yes. Azuran breathes again."

"What's the order?"

The man smiled faintly. "We watch. We wait. And if the Sovereign has truly returned…"

He turned his gaze east, toward Oregon.

"…we prepare to test his fire."

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Back in Portland – Late Afternoon

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Kael followed Selene down a stairwell behind her clinic into a secondary chamber, deeper underground.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Somewhere safe," she replied.

He noticed the walls here weren't stone. They were older, clay, etched with sigils, some glowing faintly under his presence.

They reached a large door bound in iron and bone. Selene placed her palm against the center, whispered a short chant in an unfamiliar tongue, and the door split open with a hiss.

Inside was a sanctuary.

An underground chamber filled with relics, scrolls, and weapons hung in a crescent along the walls. At its center burned a small blue flame inside a stone brazier, contained, pulsing softly.

Kael paused. "What is this place?"

Selene stepped inside, hands in her coat pockets.

"This is my father's old sanctum. He was a spirit-tamer, like me. Kept records of sovereign sightings, buried knowledge, war maps. Most of it burned during the Fade."

Kael ran his hand along one of the relics, a thin, spiraled dagger made of black glass. It vibrated faintly under his fingers, recognizing something in him.

Selene watched. "You don't just remember, do you? You're already reconnecting."

He looked up at her. "Why are you helping me?"

She hesitated. "Because I owe your kind."

"My kind?"

"Reincarnates. I wouldn't be alive if one hadn't burned a cult out of my mother's body fifteen years ago." She glanced at the flame in the brazier. "Besides, I'm good with souls. And yours is loud."

Kael felt himself settle slightly. The weight of it all, the visions, the fire, the thing he killed, it was too much. But here, underground, surrounded by relics that remembered him… it made a strange kind of sense.

"I need to learn," he said quietly.

Selene smiled. "You're damn right you do."

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Later That Night – Selene's Clinic Rooftop

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The city lights shimmered below. Selene leaned on the edge of the rooftop, flask in one hand, crossbow slung casually across her back. Kael stood beside her, arms crossed.

"So what happens now?" he asked.

"We train. We track. We stay alive." She tilted her head toward him. "And we figure out how much of Azuran you still are."

Kael stared up at the stars, uncertain.

"Do you think I was… a good person?"

Selene was quiet for a moment. Then: "I think you were someone who burned very, very brightly. And I think this world will try to snuff you out before you remember why."

Kael nodded slowly.

Then, as if summoned by his thoughts, he felt it again, that pull. A thrum beneath his skin. A distant pressure.

Something was coming.

Something that had waited a long time to see him rise.

And it wasn't coming to welcome him back.