The temple was silent, save for the faint whisper of wind slipping through cracked stone walls. I stood at the threshold, heart pounding, drawn here by something I couldn’t name—and couldn’t resist.

The air was heavy, as though it carried the weight of centuries. When I stepped inside, unease coiled around my spine, tightening with every breath.

He sat at the center of the room, a figure shrouded in shadow and despair. His presence pressed against me like a storm barely contained—the kind that could destroy everything in its path.

I didn’t see a man.

I saw a god.

And he was broken.

His hands covered his face, as if shielding himself from a truth too unbearable to endure. But it wasn’t his vulnerability that terrified me—it was the way the air itself seemed to tremble around him, charged with power so unstable it made every instinct scream for me to flee.

I couldn’t move.

When he finally looked up, his gaze locked onto mine. His eyes were not the eyes of a man. They were oceans—of madness, of grief, of something ancient and undone.

They stripped me bare, seeing past flesh and bone, into something buried deep within me—something even I had never known.

I didn’t know him.

But I knew, with terrifying certainty, that I would die for him.