Auriella lay motionless, her gaze anchored to the silver sliver of the moon. Two years had bled into the next since her father's passing, and this patch of earth—his grave—remained her only sanctuary in a world that felt increasingly abrasive. Her aunt's cruelty was a constant weight, and the world was a cacophony of noise she wished to escape. Reaching up, she unclipped her hearing aids, plunging her world into a blissful, velvet silence ,she enjoyed the silence In the cemetery ,nobody ever came here and especially not by this time of the night .
She closed her eyes, drawing the biting evening air into her lungs. The cemetery was cold, but her heart was colder; she didn't mind the chill of the dead.
Suddenly, a vibration hummed through the granite beneath her. she felt the rhythmic thud of footsteps. She froze. At this hour, the cemetery should have been hers alone. She had been coming here for the past two years now and has never seen anyone coming here ,not even an animal .
Fear, sharp and jagged, pierced her chest.
Who would be here? Why now? And by this time ,The living always haunted her, now even in her place of solitude she still has to deal with them .Compelled by a terrifying curiosity, she closes her ears and focuses on her hearing ,after confirming that ,the footsteps she heard must have been at least five meters far from where she relaxed a bit , maybe there just naughty college students she thought ,""not like they could hear or see her from that distance, The whole cemetery was dark with only the moonlight reflecting on the grave stone ,so she decided to just lay back and wait for them to leave .
thanks to her keen sense of hearing she could hear what must people couldn't , the cemetery was big with it's length expanding to the thick forest.
She listened closely,"" if they're planning anything creepy I'll just run for it she thought to herself, before they could get to her she would most likely be back in the village.
"...certain he was buried here, Jared?"
"Of course I am," a rough voice snapped. "I did my homework. I'm not about to have that hot-tempered Ancient throwing a tantrum because we couldn't find xaviel"
"Then start digging. Kai gave us three hours before he starts taking our heads as trophies."
Auriella's blood turned to ice. From her father's grave, she listened to the two men—foreigners by their accents—heaving shovels into the dirt. They didn't sound like locals from Peruh; they sounded like foreigners.
Digging ,"" what could they possibly want with a dead person ,""she thought .
"Why bury yourself?" one of them, Phil, grunted.
"If you're hiding from the kai, where's the one place no one would looks?" Jared replied.
"The grave I guess Phil said with a chuckle
"Raven, you just going to stand there like a statue?" Jared called out to a third man.
The man named Raven didn't move. His gaze was fixed on the freshly disturbed earth. "Hurry," he commanded, his voice a low, lethal vibration. He suddenly scanned the perimeter, his eyes like a predator's catching the light. "Are you certain we are alone?
Auriella's heart hammered against her ribs.
Are they some kind of a cult .
The sound of metal hitting wood echoed through the trees. Tug. They had hit the coffin.
"Alright, Xaviel," Jared growled, punching the lid with a force that should have shattered his hand. He ripped the wood away and hauled a body out.
The man who emerged wasn't a corpse. He was covered in soil, a lazy, arrogant smirk playing on his lips. "Seriously, guys? Can't a man die in peace?"
"You actually did it," Phil muttered, leaning against a tree. "You played dead."
Xaviel brushed the dirt from his expensive clothes. "It's only been a year. I just wanted to experience the Great Beyond. It was actually quite pleasant. The first few weeks were torture— I couldn't breathe,dying and reviving over and over—but then I fell into a deep sleep."
"What kind of sleep?" a new, icy voice cut through the air.
Xaviel's smirk vanished. He scrambled behind Raven like a frightened pup. "Kai... I just wanted to..."
"Why didn't you check the perimeter?" Kai's voice was like velvet over steel. "And you, Raven. You knew someone was here. Why ignore it?"
"She's too far to matter," Raven said, his eyes meeting Kai's.
In a blur of motion that defied the laws of physics, Kai vanished from the grave and reappeared directly in front of Auriella.
Auriella gasped, her back hitting her father's headstone. They were all there now, surrounding her like a pack of starving wolves around a sacrificial lamb.
"Little girl," Kai spoke, his voice commanding and strangely melodic. "Open your eyes."
As if under a spell, Auriella obeyed. She had expected a monster—something with rotting skin and fangs with pointy horns . Instead, the man Standing before her was ethereally beautiful.his eyes swirling with an ancient, danger.Auriella stared, breathless. He was not merely handsome; he was a masterpiece of cold, lethal perfection. His skin possessed the luminescence of polished marble under the moonlight, and his features were carved with a precision that felt almost cruel in its beauty. His eyes, dark and bottomless like the midnight sea, held a gravity that anchored her in place. Though four other dangerous men stood like looming shadows around her father's grave, they faded into a blur. To Auriella, the world had shrunk down to this one man. She was a bird trapped in the sights of a predator, trembling with a primal fear, her heartbeat pounding loud in her ear ,yet she found it impossible to tear her eyes away from his.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. His voice was a rich, low velvet that seemed to vibrate in her very bones.
"V... visiting my dad," she managed to mutter. The sound of his voice sent a violent shiver down her spine, feeling like a cascade of ice water drenching her skin.
"I checked... I checked well. I didn't know anyone was here and plus nobody visits the cemetery this late ,I'm sorry, Kai," Jared spoke, his voice uncharacteristically small.
Beside him, Phil looked paralyzed. He knew the volatile nature of the man standing before the girl. Kai was a creature who loathed mistakes ,jarred was indeed in trouble and so was the girl in front of them .
The air grew heavy with anticipation. Everyone held their breath, waiting for the strike, except for Raven. He remained calm,leaning against a nearby tree, his eyes narrowed as he read Kai's every micro-expression.
"There's no point in killing her," xaviel said, his voice flat. "She most likely didn't even know we were here ,the distance is too much for a human to hear or see us . If we hadn't come here, she would have remained in the dark ,if you didn't leap right in front of the poor creature .
Auriella finally dropped her gaze to the dirt, unable to sustain the intensity of Kai's stare any longer. Even with her eyes downcast, her ears caught every word, every shift in the grass. Her heart skipped a jagged beat, and her blood turned to lead,these people weren't humans that was for a fact ,she was in a situation she couldn't comprehend,it felt like a nightmare and she just wanted to wake up.
She might have not seen them ,but she definitely heard everything they said and did .
she prayed to the heavens above to help her out ,if these creatures found out she had a special hearing ability then she was done for.
Kai didn't look away. He continued to study her with a strange, hungry intensity that felt like he was peeling back the layers of her soul.
Aurelia feared that he would find out.
Jarred and Phil looked at raven with pleading look ,he was the only one who could stop Kai from doing anything now
I.....Phil tried to speak but was cut off.
"Compel her," kai commanded, the words cold and final. Without another glance, he turned and vanished into the darkness.