Chapter 4: Echoes Under the Skin

He woke in darkness, his head pounding to a rhythm older than memory. For a moment, Kairos didn't know if it was night or morning, dream or waking. He lay tangled on the living room floor, the world soaked in shadows and shapes he didn't quite recognize. His skin prickled, his senses stretched raw—each breath sharp as ice, every heartbeat thundering like a drum beneath his ribs.

Memories crashed over him in bursts—Lilith's eyes glowing red, her voice thick with panic, the impossible fire in his veins after tasting her blood. He wondered if it had all been some fever dream, until the hush of the apartment grew too clear: he could hear the clock ticking in the far kitchen, the whisper of city tires blocks away, even the slow, steady beat of his own pulse.

His mouth was dry, and there was a strange, metallic taste on his tongue. Everything felt out of place. The colors of the morning light leaking through the curtains—too vivid. The rumble of a tram outside—so thunderous it rattled his bones. Even the scent of his mother's lavender perfume, lingering from before she left for work, made him flinch.

Kairos tried to stand, his legs trembling with unfamiliar strength and weakness at once. His reflection in the window stopped him. There was something new in his face: his eyes a golden, unnatural light beneath the brown, a pallor to his skin that seemed almost luminous. The memory of Lilith's touch—the desperation, the regret—still lingered as a shadow in every part of him.

He almost called for his mother, then thought better. How could he even explain? He wasn't sure if he'd survived something or been remade into something else entirely.

The hunger burned low and strange in his gut. Not for food, but for something he didn't know how to name. It scared him more than the teeth or the visions or the way every sound seemed to slice him open from the inside.

Kairos braced himself against the wall. Everything in the apartment felt too small, too bright, too loud. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to breathe, to remember who he was before the night—the person who belonged here, in this quiet, ordinary life.

At the edge of his thoughts, a new voice echoed: not quite his, not quite hers, but forever marked now by the bite and the blood. The world beyond his window held its breath.

And beneath his skin, something old and powerful waited for him to claim it.

End of Chapter 4