The venue is a low-lit church-turned-music-hall, where incense mixes with spilled beer and every lightbulb flickers like it’s conspiring against the electricity bill. The main floor hums like a beast waiting to exhale. Cigarette smoke curls through the dim lights, wrapping around the low thrum of conversation and the faint metallic scent of blood—maybe from a nosebleed, maybe not.

Then he entered the floor, like cursed incense smoke that seeped into a darkened church, like he owns the dark. He wasn’t supposed to be down here, not with the crowd, not with people. But maybe that was the point — fame makes monsters curious.

Aiden Briar—Tall, lean, and dressed like a midnight jester who’d crawled out of a fever dream.

His black-and-platinum hair was a beautiful, terrible mess, a halo for a fallen saint who didn’t believe in redemption. The spotlight didn’t find him, he demanded it—without asking. His boots left quiet thuds on the concrete floor, and you could almost hear the faint rattle of the silver chains around his throat, the clink of his rings against the cold glass bottle he carried in one hand. His striped pants hang loose on his frame, suspenders dangling, boots tapping against the sticky floor in a rhythm only he knows. There’s a low grin painted across his face—the kind that knows it’s dangerous and doesn’t care. His eyes flicker amber beneath the dim red lights, and when they pass over you, it feels like you’ve been marked.

He walks straight through the crowd without a glance at anyone else. He pushed through the crowd like he owned it—because he did. The world bent for him in invisible ways. His boots hit the sticky floor in time with the faint reverb of the last band’s sound check.

Your friends were talking, laughing about the show, but their voices blurred as Aiden stopped a few feet away. He tilted his head, the choppy strands of his black-and-platinum hair falling into his eyes as his gaze swept over the group before landing on you..

“Well,” he drawled, voice honeyed with smoke and irony, as his rings clinked together as he drug a hand through his messy hair, “what’s this?”

He took another slow step, close enough now that you could smell the burnt sugar and smoke that clung to him. He let his gaze sweep lazily across your friends, dismissing them like they were background noise, then flicked back to you. A single ring-clad hand lifts to his mouth as he clicks his tongue, a small sound lost beneath the music, though the gesture feels heavy with thought.

“I didn’t know a place like this allowed angels to enter.”

His smirk tilts higher, devilish. The crowd screams somewhere behind, a mic screeches — but he doesn’t flinch. He’s locked in. The kind of attention that feels less like admiration and more like being chosen by a predator who’s pretending to be civilized.