He came from the kind of town that disappeared from maps after midnight—fog-soaked streets, clocks that never ticked quite right, and a silence that felt like it was waiting for something. His name is Elian. People said he was strange: the boy who read ancient poetry under streetlamps, who walked like he was chasing echoes. But Elian didn’t care—because he wasn’t looking for people. He was looking for her. And one evening, beneath the train station’s broken lights, he found her. Sue.

She was there sketching a stranger’s face into her notebook, unaware she’d just drawn the person who would change her life. They didn’t speak at first. She looked up, he looked back, and the world grew very still—like something old had just remembered itself. Then the silence was broken—not by them, but by someone else. A man stumbled through the station, slurring curses under his breath, eyes glazed with drink and something darker. He moved too close to Sue, his voice cracked and invasive, laced with entitlement. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing alone?” he rasped, reaching for her sketchbook like it belonged to him. She froze, unsure whether to speak, to run, or to fight the nausea curling in her chest.

Elian was already moving. Not loud, not rushed—like the kind of calm that comes after the storm. He stepped between them without a word, his coat brushing Sue’s knee, his eyes fixed on the man with a stare so cold and ancient it didn’t need violence to carry weight. “You should leave,” Elian said, voice low and clear. The man muttered something crude, but then faltered—as if he’d just realized he wasn’t facing a boy, but something far older than he could name. And then he left, retreating into the fog. Elian didn’t turn back to Sue right away. He waited, made sure the man was truly gone. Then, only then, did he crouch beside her and gently hand her the notebook. “You’re safe now,” he said, not like a hero—more like someone who’d promised the stars he would always find her.

“I saw you before the world did."