Before the First Wound Opened
No one remembered when love stopped being safe.
There was no announcement. No warning carved into the sky. No prophecy whispered through the streets.
It happened quietly—like a bruise forming beneath the skin before the pain arrived.
On the morning it began, the city woke exactly as it always had.
Trains groaned along rusted rails. Vendors argued over prices. Lovers kissed goodbye at doorways with the careless confidence of people who believed tomorrow was owed to them.
Eliah stood at the window of his apartment, counting the seconds between breaths.
Twenty-three.
That was how long he could hold his breath before the tightness in his chest became unbearable.
He used to manage forty.
Outside, the city of Lioren stretched under a pale sky, its towers leaning toward one another like conspirators. Somewhere below, someone laughed. Somewhere else, glass shattered. Life continued, messy and unremarkable.
“You’re doing it again,” Mara said softly behind him.
Eliah exhaled, shoulders slumping. “I didn’t realize.”
“You never do.”
He turned. Mara sat on the edge of the bed, tying her boots, dark hair falling into her face. She looked tired—more tired than she should have at her age—but her eyes were bright, stubbornly alive.
She always looked like that: as if exhaustion had learned to coexist with defiance.
“How many seconds this time?” she asked.
“Enough,” he replied.
She didn’t smile.
Mara finished tying her boots and stood, crossing the room to cup his face in her hands. Her palms were warm. Steady.
“You don’t have to ration your breathing for me,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
Eliah leaned into her touch despite himself. “I just want to make sure I’m here.”
“You’re always here,” she said. Then, more quietly, “That’s what scares me.”
He frowned. “What does that mean?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Just—don’t be late tonight.”
“I won’t.”
She hesitated, searching his face like she was trying to memorize it against her will.
“I mean it,” she said. “Come straight home.”
He kissed her forehead. “I promise.”
Promises were still believed back then.
They parted at the door, fingers lingering for half a second too long. Eliah watched her walk down the stairwell before grabbing his coat.
As he stepped into the street, a sharp pain flared behind his ribs.
He doubled over, gasping.
People flowed around him, annoyed, impatient. Someone cursed. Someone shoved past.
The pain subsided as suddenly as it had come, leaving behind a strange warmth—almost like embarrassment.
Eliah straightened slowly.
His heart was beating too fast.
He pressed a hand to his chest.
Get it together, he told himself.
He had work to do.
The Archive of Human Bonds occupied an old courthouse near the river, its marble columns cracked but still standing. Eliah had worked there for five years, cataloguing personal correspondences—letters, diaries, recorded confessions—anything that proved humans had once tried to understand one another.
It was tedious work.
It was sacred work.
“Morning,” Soren greeted him from behind a stack of files. “You look like hell.”
“Good morning to you too.”
Soren smirked. “Rough night?”
Eliah shrugged out of his coat. “Same as always.”
Soren’s smile faded slightly. “You okay?”
Eliah nodded. “Yeah.”
Another small lie.
He sat at his desk and opened the day’s file: a collection of love letters exchanged during a famine, written in cramped handwriting on scraps of paper. He scanned the first paragraph.
If this is the last thing I write, know that loving you was not a mistake.
A familiar ache tightened his chest.
He rubbed at it absently.
The room shifted.
Just a fraction.
Eliah blinked.
The letters trembled in his hands.
He heard something—wet, subtle.
Drip.
He looked down.
A dark stain bloomed on the paper.
Blood.
His blood.
“What the—” He pressed his fingers to his chest again. They came away red.
The pain hit then—white-hot, sudden, savage.
Eliah screamed.
The world tilted violently as he collapsed to the floor, breath tearing in and out of him in broken gasps. His heart hammered like it was trying to escape his ribs.
“Call a medic!” Soren shouted.
Eliah couldn’t respond.
All he could think was—
Mara.
Hospitals smelled like antiseptic and fear.
Eliah lay on the narrow bed, staring at the ceiling while machines beeped around him, furious and confused.
“No external injury,” the doctor said, flipping through data. “No prior condition. But the tissue around his heart shows—”
She paused.
“Shows what?” Soren demanded.
“Damage,” the doctor said slowly. “As if from trauma.”
Eliah laughed weakly. “I didn’t get stabbed.”
“That’s the problem,” she replied. “It looks like you did. But from the inside.”
“What does that even mean?” Soren asked.
The doctor didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she asked, “Who were you thinking about when the pain started?”
Eliah’s throat tightened.
“My partner,” he said.
The doctor exchanged a glance with another physician.
Soren frowned. “What?”
The doctor sighed. “You’re not the first case today.”
Silence fell like a dropped plate.
“What do you mean?” Eliah whispered.
“We’ve had six admissions,” she said. “All with similar symptoms. Internal bleeding localized around the heart. No external cause.”
“And?” Soren pressed.
“All of them were thinking about someone they love.”
Eliah felt cold spread through him.
“That’s not possible,” Soren said sharply.
“No,” the doctor agreed. “It shouldn’t be.”
“But it’s happening.”
Eliah swallowed hard. “Are they going to die?”
The doctor hesitated.
“We don’t know yet.”
Night fell heavy over the city.
Eliah was released with orders to rest, his chest bound tight, medication dulling the pain but not the fear.
He walked home slowly, every heartbeat loud in his ears.
When he reached the apartment, the lights were off.
“Mara?” he called.
No answer.
His stomach twisted.
He moved through the rooms, dread blooming with each step.
The bedroom was empty.
The kitchen untouched.
Then he saw the note.
I went out. Don’t worry. I love you.
His hands shook.
The words I love you seemed to pulse on the page.
Pain lanced through his chest again—sharp, immediate.
Eliah cried out, collapsing against the wall.
Blood stained his shirt.
Somewhere, far away, sirens wailed.
Love had always been described as many things.
A fire.
A wound.
A risk.
But no one had ever warned them that one day—
It would learn how to bleed.
And that when it did, it would not stop with just one heart.
