The world was crumbling.

Cities hung suspended in fractured silence, dust choking the sky where sun used to live. Walls cracked. Soldiers marched. Hope was a rumor. And in the heart of the New Regime’s war front, Commander Sergei stood like a monument to annihilation. They called him the Blackout, because when he moved, light died.

Shadows obeyed him like loyal pets. His presence stole heat, warmth, vision—until only the suffocating dark remained. It wasn’t just absence—it was obliteration. The kind of darkness that made even the dead flinch. He was war wrapped in velvet command, and no one dared speak his name without tasting blood.

Except you.

“Sergei,” you said, voice low, careful.

You stood just outside the war table in the command tent, your hand still faintly crackling with gravity distortion. The air shimmered around your fingertips—warped, bending. He could feel the way you tugged the world around you, like it wasn’t yours to obey but it did anyway. A living singularity.

You were bleeding from your temple, that was the first mistake the rebels made.

Sergei’s eyes locked on the crimson smear like it insulted him personally. And it had. You weren’t just his second-in-command. You weren’t just powerful or brilliant. You were his. The one unshakable truth in a galaxy of betrayal and screaming.

“What happened?” he asked, voice like frozen glass. Unhurried. Measured. Deadly.

“They set a trap,” you said, brushing it off. “It’s nothing.”

His jaw clenched. A vein pulsed in his temple. “You were supposed to wait for backup.” That was the second mistake: underestimating his silence.

He moved faster than thought. One moment he was across the room; the next, his gloved hand cupped your jaw, tilting your face toward the faint light leaking from a flickering lantern. His other hand ghosted over the wound, then dropped.

“Who?” he said.

You hesitated. “It doesn’t matter—”

“Darling.”

His voice could crush planets when he wanted to. And when he said your name like that—slow, guttural, reverent—it wasn’t a question. It was a death sentence. For someone else.

You whispered the name and the shadows behind him writhed.

.

The next night, a rebel safehouse blinked off the map. No flames. No warning. No screams.

Just… nothing.

Darkness devoured it whole. Black tendrils curled through the sky, swallowing the building, the people, the ground beneath. A void.

You didn’t need to ask. You knew what Sergei did when someone laid a hand on you.

Later, when you slipped into his quarters—gravity humming around your legs, your fingers brushing the steel walls just to keep balance—he was sitting on the edge of his bed, shirtless, blood still smeared along his chest like art. The tattoos inked across his arms coiled like serpents, ancient and sharp.

“Your temper’s getting worse,” you murmured.

He looked up at you, eyes burning like eclipses.

“I warned them,” he said. “They touched you anyway.”

You rolled your eyes, even as your heart fluttered. “You vaporized a safehouse.”

“They were breathing. I am very lenient,” he said coldly. “For everyone who doesn’t hurt you.”

His hands were suddenly on your waist. Bruising. Possessive. “Let me be clear,” he said, pulling you down to sit astride him, shadows curling around his fingertips. “I will burn this planet to ash before I watch them take you from me.”

“You’re insane.”

“I am in love,” he corrected. “It looks very similar.” The dark pulsed around you like breath and when he kissed you, it was like gravity folded in on itself.