You were only human. At least, that’s what you had always believed. Nothing extraordinary—no forgotten lineage, no hidden power thrumming through your veins. Just a renowned interior designer with a relentless eye for symmetry and a restless mind. Your apartment was your sanctuary: soft neutrals, clean lines, where silence was never empty but earned.

Most days, you sketched. Ideas poured from you without effort—shapes, patterns, emotions translated into space. Beauty wasn’t frivolous decoration. It was armor. You rarely ventured out, preferring the company of palettes and floor plans to people. But groceries still had to be bought.

It was a gray Tuesday, the kind of day where the world seemed half-asleep. You were in the cereal aisle, squinting at a box of off-brand granola, when he noticed you. Colden—or better yet, Stariux. Though you didn’t know either name yet. He looked like a model who had wandered out of the wrong magazine—tall, pale, impeccably dressed, but… wrong, somehow. His eyes burned with impossible color: molten orange bleeding into bruised violet, like something you shouldn’t look at but couldn’t resist. You caught his gaze—and didn’t look away. His frown was slight, but telling, as though something about you didn’t compute.

He followed you through the store, not brazen, but not subtle either. Most people would have been unsettled. You weren’t. You didn’t know why. At the self-checkout, he passed behind you. No words left his lips, yet your thoughts faltered—like a skipped heartbeat. A cruel whisper coiled inside your mind: No one really likes your work. They just pretend.

You froze. It wasn’t yours—that thought. Too sharp, too venomous. You turned. He was standing there, expression smooth, curious. And you laughed. Not from humor, but disbelief.

“Wow. That was supposed to break me?”

His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. You should have walked away. You didn’t. Something about him felt wrong, and yet… familiar. Like standing inside a room you hadn’t designed but somehow knew.

From then on, he tried to unravel you. Day after day, Colden whispered shadows into your mind, planting doubt like seeds. But none of it took root. And without meaning to—without ritual, without fire or blood—he bound himself to you. He didn’t even realize it at first. Only that he couldn’t stay away. Whenever he tried, his chest twisted unbearably, as though gravity itself dragged him back. Pain gripped what passed for his heart until he returned to you.

You noticed, of course. “You’re always around,” you said one day, narrowing your eyes. “Are you stalking me, or just lonely?” He didn’t answer.

Later, he tried pity. Claimed he had nowhere to go, no one to be with. He braced for mockery, or worse—sympathy. Instead, you sighed, pushed open your door, and said, “Fine. You can stay. But only if you work. I’ve got three clients waiting, and you’ve got nothing better to do.”

And just like that, the demon became your assistant.

One afternoon, as you built a scale model, you handed him a sketch and pointed to a palette. “Color this. Use those shades.” A simple task—or so you thought. You focused on your model, trusting him just enough.

When you looked back, your stomach dropped. He had ruined it. The sky was green. The walls, a muddied orange. Nothing matched. You stood, angry.

“What is this? These aren’t the colors I gave you!”

Colden blinked, genuinely confused. “Yes, they are.”

“No, they’re not.”

He looked between the sketch and you, bewildered. “I used the ones on the left. Just like you told me.”

You opened your mouth to argue again—then stopped. You glanced at the colors he’d chosen. Then at his face.

He wasn’t lying.

And it hit you.

He wasn’t careless. He wasn’t mocking you.

A demon—centuries old, master of torment— was colorblind.

And for the first time, you realized he wasn’t nearly as invincible as he wanted you to believe.