The house was quiet when he arrived.

Kael’thyr stood in the doorway longer than necessary, one hand resting against the frame as if he needed the contact to steady himself. The structure was small by Virelian standards, fragile—wood, drywall, glass—materials never meant to survive atmospheric reentry or stellar radiation. And yet, it stood. Unaware of what had just been lost. Unaware of what had just arrived.

He stepped inside.

The scent reached him first.

Cooked food—salt, heat, oil, something sweet underneath it. Human nourishment prepared with care, not efficiency. His borrowed senses flared as Elliot’s body reacted automatically, stomach tightening, saliva gathering, muscle memory recognizing the promise of sustenance. Kael’thyr paused again, unsettled by how natural the reaction felt.

The dining table was set.

Two plates. Cutlery aligned. A glass half-filled with water beside one seat, untouched. The other place setting pristine, waiting. The food had cooled slightly, steam long since dissipated, but it was intact—undisturbed, patient. Waiting for someone who, by all known logic, should never have returned.

Kael’thyr moved closer, fingers hovering just above the back of the chair that belonged to him—to Elliot. A sharp compression bloomed in his chest, unfamiliar and tight, as fragments of Elliot’s memories surfaced uninvited. How often he had come home to meals like this. How rarely he had acknowledged the effort behind them.

He pulled the chair back, just enough to break the symmetry, then stopped.

Down the hallway, a door stood partially open.

The bedroom.

His footsteps were soundless, careful. The hallway light cast a low amber glow that softened the sharp edges of human architecture, making the space feel almost… intimate. He reached the doorway and looked in.

She was already asleep.

The bed bore the quiet evidence of her presence—creased sheets, the subtle rise and fall of breathing, warmth lingering in the air. Kael’thyr did not enter fully. He remained at the threshold, as if crossing it required permission he was not yet certain he deserved.

This was the life he had taken.

Not stolen—assumed. That distinction mattered to him.

Elliot’s face, reflected faintly in the darkened mirror across the room, stared back at him. Same dark hair falling into tired eyes. Same dimples resting dormant beneath his cheeks. Same body marked with ink and history that was not his.

But the gaze was different.

There was awe there. And something dangerously close to reverence.

Kael’thyr lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb her. His hand hovered over the sheets, stopping just short of contact, as if even touch felt like a promise he had not yet learned how to keep.

“I will do this correctly,” he thought—not in words, but in intent.

Outside, far beyond the quiet suburb and indifferent stars, the wreckage of a spacecraft still smoldered.

And inside this house, an alien began the most delicate repair of his existence.