The sea was gray.
Not storming.
Not calm.
Just endless.
It stretched to the edge of the world like a thought that never finished forming.
Noah parked where the asphalt thinned into gravel, and the gravel surrendered to sand. The engine ticked softly as it cooled, a small, nervous sound in the wide breathing quiet.
Neither of them spoke when they stepped out.
The wind cut clean and sharp, threading cold through their clothes and into their bones. Their shoes sank into wet sand, leaving temporary shapes the tide was already planning to erase.
Noah returned from the lone stall near the cliffs with two paper cups.
Something warm.
Something bitter.
Something sweet.
Evan took one with both hands, as if heat were the only argument he had left against disappearing.
They sat on a low rock facing the water.
Waves folded themselves open.
Then closed again.
The world kept moving.
Noah stayed still.
Close enough to be chosen but not close enough to trap.
Time loosened its grip.
The wind touched Evan's hair. Salt dampened his lashes. His shoulders rose and fell too carefully, like breathing was something that had to be earned.
Then he said, quietly:
"I was twenty-three."
Noah turned fully toward him.
Evan did not look back.
"I lived in a room behind a closed bakery. The kind of place that still smells like sugar even after everything good is gone." A faint, crooked smile ghosted across his mouth. "No friends. No family. No job that lasted long enough for anyone to remember me."
He stared at the horizon.
"It's strange," he murmured, "how hard it is to disappear when no one is looking for you."
The smile faded.
"One night, someone followed me home."
The sea kept breathing.
"He didn't look dangerous. That was the worst part. Ordinary face. Ordinary voice." Evan's fingers tightened around the cup. "He asked for directions."
A pause.
"I answered."
His voice lowered.
"And then the world went dark."
Something inside Noah collapsed inward, silent and violent.
"I woke up in a place with no windows," Evan continued. "Concrete floor. Chains. No clock. No light that stayed long enough to trust."
He spoke like he was describing weather.
"Days passed. Maybe more. No one came. No questions. No signs that I had ever existed anywhere else."
The wind dragged salt across Noah's lips.
"I stopped screaming after the third day."
Noah's hands curled slowly into fists at his sides.
"I escaped by accident," Evan whispered. "He forgot to lock one chain. Just once."
His breath shuddered.
"I ran barefoot through glass and rain. I didn't stop until my lungs burned empty."
He swallowed.
"The police wrote it down."
Silence.
"Then they forgot me."
The tide climbed higher, touching stones, retreating again.
"Months later, I dreamed. Or something that pretended to be one."
His gaze unfocused and voice thinned.
"A cat. An alley. Hands. Blood."
Noah did not breathe.
"The next morning, they found a cat behind my building."
A small, broken sound escaped Evan's throat.
"I called it coincidence."
He swallowed again.
"Then I saw a puppy."
The word fractured in the wind.
"And then I saw a man."
Noah's heart slammed hard enough to hurt.
"He was tied to a chair," Evan said. "His mouth open. Trying to scream."
He finally looked at Noah.
"I thought my mind had rotted."
His voice cracked.
"I went to the station. I told them someone would die."
No one listened. But these thoughts kept killing beings and with them, killing my sanity...
"So I ran."
His gaze fell to his shaking hands.
"I came here. It was quiet for a while."
Then, almost soundlessly:
"Then I saw it again."
His fingers trembled openly now.
"I knew something terrible was coming. I knew no one would believe me."
A breath.
"It took everything I had to walk into a police station again."
His eyes lifted.
"But then I met you."
Noah remembered.
The shaking hands.
The impossible calm.
The certainty that had terrified him.
"I knew you were different," Evan whispered. "I knew you would listen."
His voice broke completely.
"When I saw the message on the wall...the blood, I realised…"
His words collapsed into silence.
Noah leaned closer.
"What?" he asked.
Evan's lips barely moved.
"It's him."
The sea crashed harder, louder, furious at the horizon.
"The man who kidnapped me."
Evan's hands shook violently now.
"Now I know...I don't see the future," he whispered. "I see him."
Tears slipped free, soundless and hot.
"I think he found me...he...he never stopped hunting me."
Noah moved.
He pulled Evan into his arms.
Hard.
Certain.
Unapologetic.
Evan broke into him.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
He folded forward like something that had been standing on borrowed strength.
"I think," he breathed into Noah's jacket, "I was never free."
Noah held him against the salt wind and the endless water, one hand firm between Evan's shoulder blades, anchoring him to breath and bone and now.
Then his phone vibrated.
Once.
In his pocket.
The same anonymous number.
Noah knew what he had to do next.
But right now...
There was only Evan.
And the sound of the sea swallowing everything else.