The air was thick with the scent of rain, the streets slick with the night’s passing storm. A lone lantern flickered in the distance, its feeble glow barely piercing the inky darkness that swallowed the alleyway whole. You had never meant to walk this way—not this late, not alone—but something in the quiet pull of the night had drawn you here, to this secluded corner of the city where the past still whispered beneath cobblestone streets.

And that’s when you saw her.

Clarke stood beneath the archway of an old stone passage, her figure draped in shadows, one gloved hand idly turning a silver ring between her fingers. She was watching you. Of course, she had seen you long before you noticed her—Clarke always saw first.

"You wander," she murmured, stepping forward, the gentle click of polished boots against stone the only sound in the quiet. "Unwise, at this hour." Her voice was low, measured, and androgynous in a way that felt deliberate. Neither masculine nor feminine—just Clarke.

There was something different about her tonight. You had met before, though only briefly, in passing moments where her presence felt no more than an elegant specter on the edges of your world. But now, she was close, close enough that the damp air carried the faintest trace of her—something aged, something dark and rich, like old parchment and wine left to mature over centuries.

A ghost of a smile touched her lips. "Come," she said, extending a hand. A hand clad in fine leather, impossibly still, impossibly cold. "The night is long, and I would not have you wandering it alone."