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Chapter Fifty-Four — Afterward

Penulis: Miranda Miley
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-01-14 10:51:31

Nora’s Point of View

I leave the café without looking back.

Not because I am trying to be brave. Not because I am trying to preserve something fragile. The door closes behind me, the bell gives its soft, ordinary ring, and the world continues exactly as it was already doing.

Cold air presses against my face the moment I step outside. It smells like damp pavement and exhaust and something fried drifting from a place down the block. People pass me in coats and scarves, shoulders hunched agains
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  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Seventy-Three — The Place Where She Returns

    Nora’s Point of View I wake with the memory of starlight still on my skin. For a moment, I do not move. I let the morning settle around me the way it does after something meaningful has happened, as though the world is being careful not to disturb the afterimage. The bed is empty. Not in the way that suggests absence, but in the way that suggests choice. The pillow beside me is still warm. The air holds the faint scent of him, clean and unmistakable. He was here. He stayed. And when morning came, he left on his own terms. I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. Sunlight cuts in pale lines across the room, making everything ordinary again. No visions. No pulls. No warnings. Just light, dust in the air, and the steady rhythm of my breathing. I sit up slowly and notice my body remembers last night in the gentlest way. Not pain, not ache, just awareness, like a door that opened and decided to stay open. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and rest my feet on the floor

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Seventy-Two — Fate’s Point of View

    The world has returned to its ordinary rhythm. Not peace, but steadiness, the way a vast mechanism resumes its hum after a brief disturbance. Threads continue to flow. Lives continue to bend toward their ends. The Weave holds, as it always does. And still, something refuses to align. It is not shattered. It is not broken. It is shifted, and stubbornly so. From my vantage, existence resembles a living map. Luminous lines bend toward one another, separate, then converge again. Birth arcs toward death. Choice ripples into consequence. Probability drifts beneath everything like an invisible current, always present and always accounted for. It is efficient. It is beautiful. It is merciless only in its consistency. Yet in the center of it all, a blank remains. A silence where there should be pattern. Nora. Her name carries weight now, though it should not. Names belong to mortals, fragile labels for fragile lives. To me, she should be a coordinate, a trajectory, a clean line

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Seventy-One — The Gravity of Us

    Kieran’s Point of View The silence of the clearing is not empty. It is heavy, vibrating with the weight of things unsaid and the sudden, sharp proximity of a woman who has become my entire horizon. Nora lies on the blanket, her skin catching the moonlight until she looks less like a person and more like a celestial event. I have watched the birth of stars, the slow, violent churning of nebulae, but they were distant. Cold. This is warm. This is breathing. I shift, propping myself on one elbow to look down at her. My hand finds the curve of her bare shoulder. The dress she chose is a soft, dark fabric that leaves her collarbones and shoulders exposed to the night air. Under my touch, she is electric. “Nora,” I whisper. Her name is a prayer I didn’t know I was capable of offering. She turns her head toward me, her hair spilling across the blanket like ink. Her eyes are dark, the pupils blown wide as she tracks my movement. I lean in, my breath ghosting over the shell

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Seventy — Where the World Once Paused

    Nora’s Point of View The morning does not rush us. We move through it slowly, as if neither of us is quite ready to name what it is yet. The light shifts across the floor while I move around the kitchen, pulling things together from habit more than thought. Eggs. Bread. Butter. The quiet rhythm of something familiar grounding me after everything that came before. Kieran watches. Not in the distant way he usually observes the world, but with a kind of focused curiosity, like he’s trying to understand why any of this matters at all. I crack eggs into a bowl and glance back at him. “You’re staring again.” “I’m observing,” he says. “There’s a difference.” I smile despite myself. “Is there?” “Yes.” His gaze follows my hands as I whisk. “You’re doing this without thinking. But it’s intentional.” “That’s just cooking.” He tilts his head slightly. “No. It’s preparation. You’re making something because someone will receive it.” The way he says it makes my chest tighten. “I guess,”

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Sixty-Nine — Morning Light

    Nora’s Point of View I wake slowly. Not all at once, not with the jolt of panic or confusion that usually pulls me out of sleep, but gently, as if the morning itself is being careful with me. For a moment, I don’t move. I don’t open my eyes. I just breathe. There’s warmth beside me. Steady. Solid. Real. It takes a few seconds for my mind to catch up to the sensation, to remember why the weight against my side feels unfamiliar but not unwelcome. When I do open my eyes, it’s to the quiet light of early morning filtering through the curtains. Pale and soft, the kind that makes everything look a little kinder than it did the night before. Kieran is lying on his side, facing me. He looks peaceful. Not guarded. Not distant. Not like he’s bracing himself against something unseen. His face is relaxed, lashes resting against his cheeks, breath slow and even. He looks asleep. I watch him longer than I mean to. There’s something about seeing him like this that feels almost unreal, lik

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Sixty-Eight — Narrowing

    Kieran’s Point of View I do not go to her because I am afraid. I go because the waiting has ended. There was a time when the space between decision and action felt vast, stretched thin by consequence and calculation. Every movement required consideration. Every choice existed within a lattice of cause and effect I could see all at once. But now that space has narrowed to something almost imperceptible. A single breath. A single step. The world feels quieter as I move through it, as if it is holding itself still long enough to let me pass. I do not hurry. There is no need. The choice has already been made. Her building rises out of the dark with the same unremarkable familiarity it always has. A handful of windows still glow, scattered signs of lives settling into evening routines. The hum of electricity, the distant murmur of voices through walls. Ordinary things. Anchors. I pause outside the entrance longer than I need to, aware of the weight gathering behind the moment. Not f

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