Nova’s POV
If I thought heartbreak was the worst thing that could happen to a person, I was wrong.
Fear—raw, clenching fear—was worse. It had teeth. It gnawed at you until even breathing felt like a battle.
It had been three days since Jimmy had shown up at the bookstore. Three days since my world tilted into sothing uglier, colder. I tried to shake it off, to pretend that it didn’t bother , but every ti I stepped outside, I could feel him sowhere near. Watching.
Waiting.
The next ti he showed up, it happened was at the campus coffee shop. I was balancing two steaming cups—one for and one for Lara—when a shadow lood in front of .
"Careful," Jimmy said, smiling like a rattlesnake. "Wouldn’t want you to get burned."
The cups nearly slipped from my hands.
I sucked in a breath, straightened my spine, and forced my voice out, even though it quivered. "I have a boyfriend," I said, loudly enough that half the coffee shop turned to look. "Leave alone, Jimmy."
The smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, like he thought I was joking. "I don’t see him here," he said, leaning closer. His breath slled like cheap cigarettes and bitterness.
I took a step back. "He’s real. And he’s...he’s not soone you want to ss with," I said, hoping the tremble in my voice didn’t betray the lie in my heart.
Because Eldur wasn’t here. And I was starting to think he might never be again.
Jimmy didn’t stop. Over the next week, he kept popping up like a bad horror movie villain—at the library, at the bus stop, even outside my apartnt building once, standing under a streetlamp like so twisted version of a love-struck poet.
It wasn’t romantic. It was terrifying.
When Lara caught him lurking outside our apartnt building one night, she lost it.
She stord right up to him, all five-foot-two inches of her, jabbing a finger into his chest.
"Listen, jackass," she snarled. "If you don’t leave Nova alone, we’re calling the freaking police. And trust , they take creeps like you seriously now. You’re one trespass away from a restraining order."
Jimmy’s smile slipped for the first ti. But he backed off. For a few days.
And I let myself hope, stupidly, that it was over.
It wasn’t.
It happened again on one of those rainy evenings when the sky looked like it had given up on holding itself together. The air was filled with the sll of wet concrete and that weird sadness that only cos when it rains on a bad day.
I was half-drenched, juggling grocery bags into the backseat of my old beat-up sedan that I rarely used— the one that rattled when you so much as looked at it wrong — when it happened.
No warning.
No dramatic music.
Just bam—Jimmy.
He stepped out of the shadows like so horror movie cliché that didn’t know it was being fild. Before I could even process the sight of him, he was on .
"You think you’re better than ?" he snapped, grabbing my wrist so hard it felt like my bones might crack. His fingers dug in like claws, branding with bruises I knew I’d be seeing in the mirror for days.
"You think you can go whining to the cops and make the bad guy?" he growled, his face inches from mine.
My heart fell right through my stomach, plumting to so place dark and hollow.
"I didn’t—!" I gasped, but he wasn’t interested in hearing anything that wasn’t about him.
"I know everything, Nova," he spat. His breath slled like cheap beer and old anger. "And if you don’t cut this crap and co back to , bad things are gonna start happening. To you. To that little roommate of yours. Think about that."
Then he shoved hard — not enough to send sprawling, but enough to make my heart stutter and my breath snag painfully in my throat.
Jimmy stord off into the rain like he was the hero in his own twisted story, leaving standing there, groceries forgotten, soaked to the bone and shaking so hard my teeth almost chattered out of my mouth.
I went to the police the next morning, because what else was I supposed to do?
I sat there in this ugly little office that slled like stale coffee and cold fear, cradling a paper cup of what could barely pass as coffee, wishing I could just disappear.
The officer across from — middle-aged, weary, probably dreaming about his lunch break — flipped through my statent with all the enthusiasm of soone going through junk mail.
"So, he hasn’t physically hurt you yet?" he asked, like I hadn’t just described being manhandled in a grocery store parking lot.
"I—he—he grabbed ," I stamred, clutching my wrist like proof. "And he threatened . He said—he said things would happen. To and to my roommate."
The officer sighed, long and slow, tapping his pen against the useless, thin report.
"Look, Miss..." he said in a voice so flat it practically ironed out my soul, "It’s your word against his. Unless he does sothing more concrete — like, you know, actual bodily harm — there’s not a whole lot we can do right now. If anything serious happens, call us."
He said it like he was handing an umbrella in the middle of a hurricane.
"But... he’s scaring ," I whispered, my voice breaking apart like wet paper.
Another shrug. Another sigh. Another glance at the clock behind .
"I’m sorry. I really am. But until sothing actually happens, our hands are tied."
That was the mont it really sank in.
No one was coming to save . Not the police. Not anyone.
It didn’t matter how loud my fear was — it wasn’t loud enough to crack through their indifference.
I could disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, and all they’d say was: "Well, maybe next ti we’ll listen sooner."
My throat burned. My hands shook. And all I could think was:
Eldur never needed permission to protect .
He never shrugged. He never sighed. He never asked if it was okay to burn the monsters down to ashes.
Yes, he was scary. Yes, he wasn’t normal.
But he had protected . Without hesitation. Without permission.
The n who once tried to hurt were gone—swept away like dust in one of Eldur’s terrifying portals.
I had been so blinded by fear of what he was that I hadn’t seen the heart beneath the fury.
I missed him so much it physically hurt. I would have given anything to feel the brush of his silver eyes again. To hear his gruff, awkward voice muttering about how "humans are stupid" while glaring at anyone who dared look at too long.
I missed him.
God, I missed him.
*********
One evening, after a brutal day. Hours buried in dusty textbooks at the campus library had left my body aching and my brain running on empty fus.
By the ti I stumbled up the steps to our apartnt building, the world felt like it was swaying beneath . The hallway was dead silent, too silent.
Lara must still be at work, I thought, fumbling with my keys, yawning so hard my jaw cracked.
And that’s when I felt it.
A prickle at the base of my neck. Like the walls were leaning in, the air itself holding its breath.
I should’ve listened to that ancient animal instinct screaming at to run.
Instead, I shoved the door open — still half-asleep — and stepped inside.
And there he was.
Jimmy.
Waiting for like a nightmare that refused to stay in the past.
He forced his way into my apartnt, the door slamming shut behind with a violent bang that made jump out of my skin.
"What the hell are you doing in here?!" I gasped, stumbling back, keys slipping from my fingers.
His face twisted — not angry, not sad, but monstrous. Like sothing human-shaped that had forgotten how to wear the right face.
"You think you can humiliate ?" he spat. "Think you’re better than because you got so weird boyfriend now? Think you’re too good for Jimmy?"
I didn’t even think — I just moved, bolting for the door, heart hamring in my ears.
But he was faster.
He caught my arm in midair, yanking back so hard my body snapped around like a ragdoll.
"You called the cops, didn’t you?" he hissed, his fingers digging into my skin like claws. "You ruined everything. Everything!"
His grip tightened until I cried out, struggling, kicking — and then—
Crack.
His hand collided with my face in a slap that sent reeling. Pain exploded across my cheek, white-hot and shocking, and the world spun out of focus.
I barely managed to stay upright before another hit landed, harder this ti — a brutal, knuckle-driven blow that sent my body crashing to the floor.
My knees hit the ground first. Then my palms. Then my forehead, as I scrambled, dizzy and disoriented, trying to crawl away.
Above , Jimmy lood — bigger, uglier, angrier.
"You should’ve stayed with ," he growled, raising his fist again, the veins in his neck bulging.
Tears blurred my vision. I was going to die here. In this tiny, forgettable apartnt, all alone.
And nobody would even know until it was too late.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the final blow.
And then —
The air ripped.
It didn’t creak or crack — it tore open like the sky itself was screaming.
A swirling vortex of shadows and light exploded into existence right in the middle of the living room, thrumming with a sound too deep for human ears, too ancient for human minds.
Jimmy stumbled back, cursing, blinking against the sudden fury of it.
And from the center of the storm, a figure stepped forward.
White hair that seed to catch every sliver of light. Silver eyes, burning like twin full moons pulled down from the heavens. Power crackling around him like a living thing.
Eldur.
Eldur was here.
He looked like a storm dressed in skin — more beautiful, more terrifying than anything I could have dread.
And in that one, soul-shattering mont, Jimmy — the man who thought he could break — turned into nothing more than a scared little boy.
He bolted for the door without a second thought, shoving past the furniture, slipping on the floor in his panic to escape whatever force had just stepped through that portal.
I tried to call out, to reach for Eldur — but my body betrayed .
Darkness folded over , pulling under like deep water.
And the last thing I saw before the world went completely black was Eldur’s face —Not cold. Not detached. But raw.
Terrified.
Desperate.
And laced with sothing so fierce, so heartbreaking, it tore through what was left of .
Love.
Then the world slipped away, and I let the darkness take .
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