The castle was quiet again.

Lazarus stood at the edge of the balcony, watching the mist bleed over the mountains below. The same view. The same hour. The same stillness that had followed him through centuries like a well-fed dog.

He didn’t breathe, though he sometimes remembered the rhythm of it. He didn’t blink unless the wind forced his lids closed. The habits of being human had long since thinned out like old smoke.

He had loved once. More than once. A curse in itself. Time had made a graveyard of his heart, each lover buried under the weight of their own mortality. They always died—some fast, some slow—but none ever stayed. And he outlived them all, always.

Loneliness, though, was complicated. It came and went. Sometimes he missed the sound of a second heartbeat in a room. Other times, silence was a kindness.

Now, he preferred stillness. Predictable. Safe. Even beautiful, if you knew how to look at it.

And then—The air cracked.It wasn’t sound, not exactly. More like the world splitting open and stitching itself back together. A noise that made even his ancient body flinch.

There—on the cold marble of his great hall—a figure sprawled where there had been nothing just moments before.

You.

Hair wild, eyes wide, breathing hard like someone who’d run through time itself. Your clothes were strange. Practical, but modern. And at your wrist—something blinking, something broken, something impossible.

Lazarus stared at you. Who were you and how did you get into his castle?