Chapter Two: THE NIGHT I CROSSED THE LINE

Elara's Pov

I shouldn't have stepped out that evening. 

I reassured myself that all I needed was some fresh air. The dorm was excessively noisy, Lila was twirling about as if she'd struck it rich, video-calling her best friend while experimenting with sparkly eyeshadow. 

“Are you certain you don’t want to join me?” she inquired, partially outside the door wearing a silver jacket. “It’s film night.” “Popcorn, observing others… maybe poor choices.” 

“I'm fine,” I replied, pulling my hoodie closer. "Simply need  silence." 

"Do as you wish." She sent me a kiss before disappearing into the corridor. 

Once the door closed, silence enveloped the room like a thick, warm blanket. Yet even that was insufficient. 

Something within me vibrated—uneasy, charged. My legs acted on their own before I could halt them, leading me down the corridor, through the side door, and into the darkness. The air felt refreshing on my skin, the sky darkened with stars. 

I strolled until the campus lights dimmed and the trees grew denser around me. That's when I noticed it. 

The entrance. 

It was not supposed to be open. 

A slender gravel trail curved past it, partly obscured by darkness. My heart raced, yet I walked through regardless. 

Every step made a soft crunching sound underneath me. The mist was dense, and the breeze murmured as if it were attempting to convey something I couldn't fully perceive. 

Then I listened, chanting. Soft, rhythmic, eerie. 

I hid behind a split tree trunk, my breath stuck in my throat. 

What I witnessed sent chills through me. 

Veiled figure, positioned in a broad ring around shimmering candles. At the heart of them, Kael. 

Kael. 

Bare-chested, his torso adorned with designs that glowed in the moonlight. His eyes shone with a silver hue, as if light had sculpted them from stone. 

An elder advanced with a ritual blade. He sliced Kael's palm without any hesitation. Blood splattered on the ground. 

I gasped.

His head snapped toward me.

Our eyes met.

In that single moment, something ancient stirred beneath my skin. Something that knew him.

I turned and ran. Branches lashed my arms, roots caught my ankles, but I didn’t stop until the trees spit me back out near the dorm.

I collapsed against the brick wall, panting, heart jackhammering.

“Elara!” Lila’s voice jolted me. She stood in the doorway, wrapped in a blanket, holding a half-eaten bag of chips. “You scared the hell out of me!”

I could barely speak. “I, I had to get out.”

She took one look at my scratched arms, wide eyes and dropped her snack. “What happened to you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I think I did.”

She stared, an alarm flickering in her expression. “Where did you go?”

I hesitated. “The woods.”

Lila froze. “Elara, no. Not there. Not the grove.”

I nodded slowly. “There was a ritual… and Kael… I wasn’t supposed to see it.”

“What did you see?”

“People in robes. Blood. Kael, he changed. Or maybe he became what he really is.”

Lila’s voice lowered. “You saw them.”

I looked up. “Who are they?”

She hesitated. “They call themselves the Circle. Old bloodlines, ancient power. No one talks about it openly. But they’re not just rumors, are they?”

“No,” I whispered. “They’re not.”

“Stay away from him, Elara.”

“That’s the thing,” I murmured, “I don’t think I can.”

Sleep never came.

I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, replaying the moment over and over. The look in Kael’s eyes when he saw me, like he knew me. Like he recognized something in me I didn’t even know was there.

I should’ve been afraid. And I was. But there was something else, too.

Something deeper.

Like a memory buried beneath the surface of my soul, tugging to be remembered.

By morning, my thoughts were a tangled mess.

I dragged myself to my locker, eyes on the floor, hoping Kael wouldn’t—

He was.

Leaning against the wall like a scene from a dream I couldn’t wake up from. Arms crossed. Eyes locked on me the second I turned the corner.

“Elara.”

I stopped. His voice wrapped around my name like it was something sacred.

“Kael.”

“You were there.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said too quickly.

“Don’t lie to me.” His voice was low. Steady. “You shouldn’t have seen that. But you did. And now we have a problem.”

I took a small step back. “Is that what I am now? A problem?”

“That’s not what I meant.” His tone softened. “I just… I don’t know what this means. Why did you feel it too?”

“Felt what?”

“That pull. The second our eyes met, everything shifted. Don’t pretend you didn’t feel it.”

I couldn’t pretend.

He stepped closer, his gaze gentle but intense. “I’ve spent my life doing what I was told. Preparing for a destiny I didn’t choose. But last night, you were there… it broke everything. And I’m not sure I want to fix it.”

I blinked. “So… what do we do now?”

“I think we will figure out what this is. Together.”

Before I could speak again, a sharp voice cut through the tension.

“Kael!”

We both turned.

Seraphina.

She strode toward us, her expression twisted in disbelief.

“What are you doing with her?”

Kael didn’t flinch. “Talking.”

“To her? She’s not one of us.”

Kael looked at me again—like he was seeing something he’d been searching for his whole life.

“Maybe she is.” My heart raced at the sound of that. 

I didn’t mean to stare, but up close, Kael was… ridiculous.

Tall, built like he belonged on the cover of a sports magazine, and somehow too good-looking for a regular school hallway. His jawline was sharp enough to make someone believe in Greek gods, and his gray eyes—no, silver, almost, felt like they were staring straight through me.

And yeah, I hated that my stomach flipped.

He wasn’t trying, either. That was the worst part. He wasn’t smirking or flexing or any of that fake alpha posturing guys do at parties. He was just standing there, quiet, calm, like the world didn’t touch him the same way it touched the rest of us.

It made you wonder what he was hiding.

Seraphina, on the other hand, looked like she wanted to claw my eyes out.

“She’s not one of us,” she said, arms crossed, tone cold enough to frost the lockers.

I took a step back. Maybe I didn’t belong. Maybe I’d seen something I shouldn’t have.

But Kael didn’t even blink. “Too late,” he said, eyes still on me. “She already is.”

And just like that, I knew, whatever line I wasn’t supposed to cross, I already had.