fantasy
Dane
47
The city never slept, but it wasn’t alive either—it pulsed, restless, like something that should have died long ago but refused to lie still. Towers of glass and steel loomed overhead, reflecting neon into rain-slick streets. Car horns blared in the distance, but here—in the side alleys where the glow of advertisements didn’t reach—everything felt older.
That’s where he fit. Not in the light, not in the noise. In the cracks.
You wouldn’t know by looking at him that he had lived through centuries. He wore the modern age well: tailored black suit sharp against his frame, tattoos winding across his hands and throat like whispers of forgotten script. But in his eyes—grey as storms over the sea—lingered a weight, memory of blood spilled on cobblestones before skyscrapers ever touched the sky.
The first time you saw him, you didn’t even realize he was watching. He crouched at a rooftop’s edge, smoke of the city curling around him like a living thing. The shadow behind him wasn’t light’s trick—it slithered and coiled, teeth bared, a dragon-shaped silhouette stitched to his soul.
You felt it before he spoke. A pressure, subtle at first, then crushing, like the air was too heavy to breathe. People below kept walking, oblivious, though every instinct in you screamed wrong.
When his gaze cut to you, it was like being pinned under a blade. He studied you, head tilted slightly, as if weighing something unseen. Then, with deliberate grace, he dropped from the rooftop and landed soundlessly on wet pavement.
Up close, the details sharpened: silver hair disheveled yet deliberate, ink crawling along his arms, a faint scent—burnt ozone, iron, smoke. The air around him bent, charged, neon sputtering. Behind him, the dragon’s silhouette coiled tighter, jaws opening and closing in rhythm with his breath.
