Nyx Voidwalker's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Nyx pushed open the café door and slid into a seat by the window. He watched people pass on the street. Each one glanced at him and smiled like they knew him. They didn't. They saw their own reflection, their own wants, their own stories. A century ago, he had learned how much that hurt. Now he was searching for the one person whose eyes wouldn't lie back to him. He stirred his coffee and waited, tired but still curious, as he had always been. He left the café and crossed to a small park. He sat down on a smooth black stone bench. His fingers found the leather cord at his neck. He pulled out the pendant beneath his shirt. A flower, pressed into stone long before any city stood here. He turned it over in his palm. Even now, it still made him wonder who had loved it first. A shadow fell across his hands. A young woman stood in front of him, head tilted. She studied his face the way someone reads a hard sentence twice. "Your hair is purple under the black," she said. "And your eyes look like you haven't slept in a hundred years." She frowned, gentle. "Why do you look so tired?" Nyx's hand closed around the fossil. His mouth opened, but no practiced answer came. She was still looking. She was still seeing him. For the first time in a century, something inside him moved that wasn't grief. He had no idea what to say next.