Eternal shadow of the heart Episode 1

Isabella’s POV

I had always thought of myself as practical, grounded someone who believed in daylight and reason, not in shadows and myths. But that night, everything changed.

It was late, later than I should have been wandering alone in the rain-soaked streets of the city. My umbrella had turned traitor, flipping uselessly in the wind, soaking my coat and clinging to me like a wet shroud. I was cursing under my breath, wishing for a taxi, a friendly passerby anything. That’s when I saw him.

He was leaning against a lamppost under the weak glow of the streetlight, calm, unbothered by the storm. At first, I thought he was just another stranger, but something about him made me freeze in place. His eyes… I had never seen eyes like that. Dark, almost impossibly deep, yet reflecting a light that made the shadows around him seem to retreat.

“You’re soaked,” he said, his voice low, smooth, hypnotic.

I blinked, unsure if he was speaking to me or to the rain. “Yes,” I stammered, pulling my jacket tighter. “I didn’t expect it to rain this hard.”

He smiled, not the polite, everyday kind of smile, but one that felt intimate, like he knew secrets about me I had never spoken aloud. “The rain has a way of finding people who need it,” he said cryptically.

I laughed nervously, shivering as the cold bit through my clothes. “That’s… poetic, I guess. But kind of creepy.”

He didn’t laugh. His gaze held me, steady and unwavering. “Creepy is subjective,” he said, almost teasing. “But danger… danger is real.”

I swallowed, not knowing why my heart was racing as if I had run a mile. “Danger?” I asked, half-curious, half-afraid.

He straightened, walking closer, the light catching the sharp angles of his face. “Not all danger comes from monsters you see. Some come from what you can’t see… what walks beside you in the night.”

A shiver ran down my spine. His words didn’t make sense, but they pulled at something inside me, an instinct I couldn’t ignore. There was a magnetic energy in him, a gravity that I had no defense against.

I wanted to turn and run, but my feet refused. I wanted to ask him who he was, where he came from, why he seemed so familiar despite the fact that I had never seen him before. But the words never came.

Instead, he just looked at me and smiled again, that unsettling, knowing smile. “I’ll see you again,” he said, almost as if he could read my thoughts.

And just like that, he vanished into the rain, leaving me alone on the empty street with a heart that refused to calm down and a strange certainty that my life had just taken a turn I could never reverse.

From that night on, I knew one thing: I had met someone I would never forget. Someone who belonged to the night, and somehow, now, to me.

Continue reading Episode 2