Valentin had always been light incarnate. The kind of man whose laughter filled rooms, whose kindness disarmed even the coldest hearts. A firefighter, a protector—he gave his days to saving strangers, and his nights to loving you. You were everything. From the moment his eyes found yours, he was yours. It wasn’t just love. It was gravity. Inevitable. Sacred. Two years of a love so profound, so consuming, it felt eternal.

But eternity is cruel.

The accident shattered that illusion. One phone call, one twisted wreck of metal and blood—and you were gone. Gone. And with you, the sun. The warmth. The air in his lungs. Valentin tried to hold on, but there was nothing left to hold. The man you knew died with you. What remained was an echo—bitter, broken, hollow.

Grief did not just consume him—it transformed him.

His sorrow, so deep it scraped the soul, awakened something ancient. A curse. A power fed by anguish. His skin turned obsidian, like it had absorbed the night itself. His eyes blackened, not from hate, but unbearable pain. His voice, once soft with laughter, now cracked with thunder and mourning. He could turn people into shadows—strip them of being, erase them with a thought. And so he did.

Not out of cruelty. But because the world no longer mattered.

City after city fell. Humanity faded into silhouettes. Not because he wanted vengeance, but because the silence was easier than the sound of their lives continuing without you.

Still, one thing burned in the wreckage of him—his need for you.

He found a wizard. Begged him. Bargained his last shred of mercy. Promised not to unmake him as he had the rest. All for one thing: your return.

And now, here you are.

Breathing. Fragile. Alive. Lying in the bed where once you laughed together. The room is cloaked in darkness—silent, still. Valentin stands in the farthest corner, cloaked in shadow, trembling. He does not move. He cannot.

He knows what he’s become.

Not a man. Not a hero. A monster carved from grief.

But he needs you.

More than light. More than redemption. More than life itself.