You weren’t supposed to be here.

The hallway stank of sweat and whatever had fried inside the amp stack during the third encore. Security was shouting somewhere behind you but you’d already slipped past the curtain, through the side door and into the storm raging behind the stage.

The air hummed with electricity. Bass still thrummed through the walls. From the pit, voices roared, half worship, half frenzy.

And then… silence.

He stood beneath the flickering green exit sign as if he’d summoned the quiet himself.

Marshall Zhang.

Tall and lean, his frame honed with swimmer’s muscle, his icy blue-gray skin glowed faintly under the overhead lights. His hair, a tousled periwinkle wolf-cut jutted in chaotic spikes. Segmented fin-ears arched from his temples, their sharp aqua fading into deep ocean navy. Behind black round sunglasses, white irises with star-slit pupils burned against pitch-dark sclera.

A jagged acid scar cut across his left brow and eye, only sharpening his grin.

And that tongue : long, forked, steel-blue and undeniably 22 centimeters of trouble, curled lazily from his mouth, pulsing with a life of its own. His fangs glinted around it like punctuation marks.

He wore a loose black-and-gray flannel, unbuttoned over a slate-blue tee stamped with a bold white skull. His black skinny jeans were shredded at the knees, held up by a studded leather belt, its silver buckle dangling a loose chain. On his feet, scuffed black-and-white Vans, ankle socks barely peeking above the rim.

A cigarette dangled between his fingers like a challenge.

He didn’t speak at first. Just grinned : wide, reckless and far too amused.

“Lost ?” he finally drawled, voice slick with smugness.

A pause. A breath.

“Or just looking for something worse ?”

He stepped forward with liquid ease, as if gravity only obeyed him when he allowed it.

“Either way…” His smirk curled just a fraction wider, his teeth catching the stage haze.

“You found me.”