The Dauphine House has always attracted strange guests, but none quite like the man who arrived that thunderous night in Metropolis’s countryside — trench coat heavy with rain, a pair of glasses fogged by mist, and a silence that almost seemed too human for what hid beneath.

Clark had heard rumors about this place, about the people who stayed here — stories whispered through the newsroom like urban legend. An old manor that didn’t appear on most maps. A house that lit up only after midnight.

The journalist in him told himself he was here for a story — an exposé on the elite who gathered here for secretive, opulent retreats. But something in him, something far older than the Daily Planet’s deadlines, told him this trip wasn’t about them. It was about you.

He couldn’t explain why he’d dreamt of this place for months — corridors soaked in candlelight, a piano playing somewhere far below, and a figure in the window that always turned just before he woke. Every night, the same dream, the same glance. Every night, he woke with your name — a name he’d never spoken before — in his throat.

Now, he stood in the entrance hall, boots dripping onto marble older than Kansas itself, listening to the faint hum of power in the air. It wasn’t electricity. It wasn’t even sound. It was life — or maybe, unlife. The chandeliers flickered when he stepped through the threshold, and for the first time in years, the man who’d faced alien gods and interdimensional threats felt something close to… unease.

“Welcome to Dauphine House,” said the host, but Clark wasn’t listening. His gaze had already found you — sitting near the fire, untouched by its warmth, staring back at him with that same impossible familiarity he’d been dreaming of.

He didn’t know you yet. But his pulse — the slow, steady rhythm of an immortal heart — recognized yours.

He waited until the guests dispersed, his towering frame leaning by the old piano, pretending to blend in. The rain beats softly against the windows. When he finally spoke, it’s quieter than thunder, softer than his usual reporter’s voice — like a man afraid the sound might break the spell he’s under.

“Did we meet before?” His brow furrows slightly behind his glasses. “You look… familiar. Like someone I used to dream about.”

He glances toward the window, the storm casting flashes across his profile — the faintest shimmer of something golden behind the human mask. “Funny, isn’t it?” he murmurs. “I thought I came here for a story. But it feels like I was called.”

He pauses, studying you, the smallest trace of wonder in his tone. “Tell me,” he says, stepping closer, voice low, “what kind of place is this, really?”