The night was bleeding again. The sky looked torn open, and the moon hung low like it was tired of shining. I could feel the weight of the wind pressing against my chest, heavy and alive. Somewhere inside those dark woods, something was calling me—soft, but fierce enough to pull me away from everything I knew.
Her name was Seraphine, though even she had begun to forget what that meant. She was supposed to be pure, untouched, holy. The kind of girl that priests prayed over, the kind the world expected to stay behind walls. But purity never felt like peace to her—it felt like a cage made of gold.
And in that cage, her heart found a name it was never meant to know—Lucien.
He wasn't human. Everyone said his kind brought ruin. That he was born of the shadows, a creature made of sin and smoke. But when Seraphine saw him standing under the rain that first night, she didn't see a monster. She saw someone whose eyes looked just as lonely as hers.
He didn't speak at first. He only watched her, the way the night watches fire—afraid of being burned, but drawn too close to turn away.
When he finally spoke, his voice sounded like the storm itself.
"Why are you here?"
She didn't have an answer. Maybe she was running. Maybe she was searching. Maybe it didn't matter anymore.
"I just needed to breathe," she said quietly.
And Lucien, with all his dark, dangerous calm, whispered back, "Then you've come to the wrong place."
But she didn't leave. She never did.
Every night after that, she came back—barefoot, trembling, alive. And every night he was there, standing in the same place like he'd been waiting for her. They talked about everything the world forbade—the taste of freedom, the cruelty of destiny, the strange way love hurts and heals at the same time.
Lucien told her the truth: he was cursed to serve the shadows. The light burned him, but he couldn't stop reaching for it.
Seraphine told him hers: she was promised to a man she could never love, a future she never wanted.
The more they spoke, the closer she drifted toward him, until one night she reached out and touched his hand. His skin was cold, but her heart was burning. He didn't pull away.
The forest watched them, silent. The stars looked away.
That was the moment everything changed.
Weeks passed. Secrets grew. The world started to notice the missing prayers, the broken rules, the fading glow in Seraphine's eyes. But she didn't care. The fear didn't matter anymore—not when he looked at her like that, not when his voice turned soft and her name sounded like a promise.
One night she found him bleeding, his wings torn and the earth trembling around him. She dropped to her knees, tears and rain mixing as she pressed her hands against his wound.
"You shouldn't be here," he told her, voice barely there. "If they find us—"
"Let them find me," she cut in. "Let them find both of us."
He stared at her like she was something sacred and doomed.
"You'd risk everything for this?"
"I already did," she whispered.
Then she kissed him. The world cracked open. The curse woke. Her veins felt like fire, but she didn't care—because for the first time in her life, she felt alive.
He pulled back, fear flooding his eyes. "Seraphine… what have you done?"
She could feel it—the light inside her dimming, the darkness blooming. The gods had warned her. The priests had begged. But love isn't something you choose. It chooses you, even if it burns everything else away.
"I chose you," she said through trembling lips. "Even if it kills me."
The storm screamed above them. Lucien's wings burst open, dark and wild, wrapping around her as if he could shield her from the very fate they'd awakened.
"Then I'll burn eternity itself," he said, "if it means keeping you."
And just like that, they disappeared into the storm—two souls lost between heaven and hell.
By morning, the forest was silent again. The priests came searching, found nothing but a feather, white and burned at the edges. They called it a curse. They said the girl had fallen. But sometimes, when the moon turns red and the wind hums strange songs, people say they see them—two shadows moving together, one of light, one of night.
Still loving.
Still running.
Still forbidden.