The Twenty-Fifth Night
The Dream
Stop.
The command echoed through the marble chamber, but the body behind her didn’t obey.
Lina’s palms pressed against cold stone—an altar, she realised dimly, the carved edges biting into her skin. Her back arched as calloused hands gripped her hips, yanking her backwards onto each devastating thrust. The wet slap of flesh against flesh filled the vast space, obscene and echoing.
She couldn’t see his face. Only feel him.
Ahh—
The sound tore from her throat before she could stop it. Her knees scraped against silk cushions, her spine curved into a deep arch, and her fingers clawed uselessly at smooth stone. Bronze bracelets chimed on her wrists—when had those appeared?—and incense coiled thick through the air, sandalwood and something darker, something that made her head swim.
“You take me so well.”
His voice was gravel and honey, resonant in a way no human voice should be. Ancient. The words weren’t English, yet she understood them perfectly, as though the meaning bypassed her ears entirely and sank straight into her bones.
Wha—what is—
She tried to speak, but another thrust stole the air from her lungs. Deep. So impossibly deep she could feel him in her stomach, in her throat, in the pulsing heat between her legs that threatened to unravel her completely.
His hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back. The stretch of her neck exposed the thin skin over her pulse, and she felt him lean forward, felt the heat of his breath ghosting over her shoulder.
“Say my name.”
Your name—I don’t—
“You do.” A roll of his hips. Slow, deliberate, devastating. “It is written on your soul, little wife. Say it.”
The word rose from somewhere deeper than memory. It spilled from her lips unbidden, a broken sob of syllables she’d never heard and yet had always known:
"Kaelen."
He rewarded her with a growl of approval that vibrated through her entire body. His rhythm shifted—harder now, faster, each impact driving her further onto the altar until the stone edge bit bruises into her thighs. The sound was filthy: slick, wet, the obscene squelch of her body accepting him again and again.
She should be embarrassed. She should be terrified. Instead, a molten heat pooled low in her belly, tightening with every stroke, every grunt, every whispered endearment in that lost language.
His hand released her hair and slid around to her front. Calloused fingers traced the swell of her breast before finding the sensitive peak, rolling it between thumb and forefinger. The pleasure spiked—sharp, electric—and she pushed back against him, desperate for more.
“Eager.” A dark chuckle. “Even after all this time.”
All this time? I don’t understand—I’ve never—
“Shh.” His palm flattened against her sternum, pressing her back against his chest. The new angle let him sink impossibly deeper, and she whimpered at the stretch, the fullness. “You will remember. When the time comes, you will remember everything.”
His other hand dropped to where their bodies joined. A single fingertip found the swollen bud at her apex, and Lina shattered.
"Kaelen—!"
The orgasm crashed through her like a wave of white fire. Her walls clenched around him, spasming, pulling, and she felt him follow her over the edge—a guttural roar against her shoulder as he buried himself to the hilt and pulsed inside her. Heat flooded her core. Again. Again. She could feel each surge, could feel her body drinking him in, greedy and desperate and—
His hand pressed flat against her chest. Over her heart.
And there, beneath his palm, something burned.
She looked down. A birthmark she’d carried her whole life—the shape of a broken blade, spread across her left breast—glowed faint gold through her skin. Matching light flickered from his chest, from a jagged scar carved directly over his heart.
What—
The light intensified. Blinding. The temple walls dissolved into radiance, and his arms around her waist became smoke, and his voice in her ear became an echo—
“Find me.”
The Aftermath
Lina woke with a gasp, her back arching off the mattress so violently she nearly tumbled from the bed.
Her hand flew to her chest. The skin over her birthmark was hot to the touch, almost feverish, and when she pulled her tank top aside to look, the mark was flushed an angry pink—darker than she’d ever seen it.
Just a dream. Just a dream. Just a—
Her thighs were slick.
Her face burned. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the phantom sensation of hands on her hips, of stone against her palms, of a voice that wrapped around her like velvet chains.
It was just a dream.
The clock on her nightstand read 12:00 AM. Exactly midnight. The first moment of her twenty-fifth birthday.
"Great present, subconscious," she muttered, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Her body ached in places it had no right to ache—her knees, her wrists, the meat of her thighs. She pressed a finger to her knee and winced at the tenderness. As though she'd actually knelt on stone for—
No. Stop it.
She tried to go back to sleep. Tossed. Turned. Stared at the ceiling. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt phantom hands on her hips, heard that ancient voice whispering in her ear.
At 5:47 AM, she gave up.
The cold water of the shower didn't help. If anything, it made things worse—the chill pebbling her nipples, the spray trailing down her stomach, the inevitable path her thoughts took back to bronze hands and ancient altars and a voice that said little wife like a prayer and a claim all at once.
She turned the water colder. Her birthmark throbbed in protest.
By the time she emerged, wrapped in a towel and shivering, the early morning light was creeping through her blinds. Her roommate's voice drifted from the kitchen, accompanied by the sizzle of something in a pan.
"Lina? You up?"
Maya's head appeared around the doorway, her dark curls pulled into a messy bun. Her expression shifted to concern when she saw Lina's face. "Whoa. Bad night?"
"Something like that." Lina managed a weak smile. "Just a nightmare."
"Yeesh. On your birthday?" Maya crossed the room and pulled her into a one-armed hug, careful of the towel situation. "Well, happy twenty-fifth anyway. I made pancakes. They're only slightly burned."
“You’re a saint.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
Lina dressed mechanically—a faded university hoodie, jeans, and her most comfortable boots. Her fingers found her sketchbook on the nightstand, and she flipped it open absently, looking for something to ground her in reality.
The pages fell open to a series of drawings she didn’t remember making.
Her breath caught.
The same image, over and over. A man’s chest, broad and scarred, rendered in graphite with a precision that bordered on obsessive. But the scar—
It was the same shape as her birthmark—a broken blade, jagged and unmistakable.
She flipped back further. More drawings. The same scar, sketched from different angles. A temple column. An altar. Hands that looked too large, too strong, wrapped around something she couldn’t quite see.
When did I draw these?
The strokes were hers—she recognised her own hatching technique, her own tendency to press too hard on the shadows—but the memories weren’t. She would have remembered drawing this. Would have remembered the way the scar seemed to glow under her pencil, the way her hand had moved without her permission.
“Lina? Pancakes are getting cold!”
“Coming,” she called, but her voice was barely a whisper.
She closed the sketchbook and shoved it into her bag.
The Pull
The university lab was nearly empty at this hour, the hum of fluorescent lights the only sound in the hallway. Professor Aldridge’s office door was cracked open, a sliver of warm light spilling onto the institutional carpet.
“Come in, come in.” He didn’t look up from the file folder in his hands, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose. “I have something for you. Consider it a birthday present, if you will.”
Lina settled into the chair across from his desk. “Professor, you didn’t have to—”
“Nonsense. You’re the most promising graduate student I’ve had in twenty years. If anyone should have first look at this, it’s you.”
He slid the folder across the desk. The label read: BLACK PEAK MOUNTAIN — EXCAVATION DATA (PRELIMINARY).
Lina’s birthmark pulsed.
She ignored it.
“I’ve never heard of this site,” she said, flipping the folder open. Photographs, topographical maps, and carbon dating reports. Her eyes skimmed the data without processing it.
“New discovery. Hikers found an entrance last month. The dating is... unusual.” Aldridge leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “The architecture is consistent with pre-Roman Celtic structures, but the preservation is remarkable. Almost suspiciously so.”
Suspiciously.
Lina turned to the next photograph and felt the blood drain from her face.
A stone carving. A warrior, larger than life, carved into a temple wall. Bare-chested. Muscled arms crossed over a broad chest.
And there, over his heart, a scar in the shape of a broken blade.
Her birthmark burned.
“This—” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. “Where is this?”
“Western approach. About a three-hour drive from the city, then a hike. I’ve already arranged for a research pass, if you’re interested.” Aldridge’s eyes sharpened. “Unless you have other birthday plans?”
Plans.
She had plans. Maya was throwing a party tonight. There was a cake in the refrigerator and a pile of gifts on the kitchen table and friends who would worry if she disappeared.
But the birthmark over her heart pulsed in time with her heartbeat, a steady drumbeat of find him find him find him that drowned out everything else.
“I’ll take it,” she said. “I’ll leave today.”
The Ascent
The mountain was silent.
No birds. No insects. Not even the rustle of wind through the trees. Just Lina’s boots crunching against dead leaves and the ragged sound of her own breathing.
This is insane.
She’d told Maya she needed solitude. A birthday retreat. Time to think. The lie had tasted like ash on her tongue, but Maya had bought it—hugged her tight and made her promise to text every few hours and not to do anything reckless.
Too late for that.
The path grew steeper. Her thighs burned, her lungs ached, and her birthmark had gone from a dull throb to a constant, searing heat. She should turn back. She should call the whole thing off and go home and pretend she’d never seen the photographs, never dreamed the dreams, never heard a voice that called her little wife in a language that didn’t exist.
But her feet kept moving.
The temple appeared between the trees like a mirage.
Lina stopped, her breath catching. It shouldn’t look like this. The photographs had shown ruins—crumbling walls, shattered columns, centuries of decay. But this structure was whole. Intact. The wood of the doors gleamed as though freshly oiled, and the stone steps showed no signs of weathering.
Impossible.
The scent hit her first. Sandalwood. Incense. The same heady fragrance from her dream.
Her birthmark flared.
She climbed the steps on legs that trembled. The doors loomed before her, carved with symbols she almost recognised—words that hovered at the edge of memory, just out of reach.
Her hand pressed against the wood. It was warm.
The door swung open on silent hinges.
The Encounter
The interior was lit by a hundred candles that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Lina’s eyes adjusted slowly, the golden glow painting shadows across stone walls. Tapestries she shouldn’t be able to identify depicted battles she shouldn’t remember. A throne sat against the far wall, empty, its high back carved with the likeness of a warrior in repose.
But it was the platform in the centre of the room that drew her gaze.
It was a bed. It was an altar. In this place, she realised, there was no difference. Silk cushions spilled across its surface in deep crimson and gold, and the air above it shimmered with heat—or magic, or something she didn’t have a name for.
And sitting on the edge, watching her with eyes that glowed faint amber in the candlelight—
Him.
Broad shoulders. Bronze skin. Dark hair that fell past his jaw, tangled and wild. A face carved from warfare and worship, sharp angles and full lips and eyes that held the weight of centuries.
He was bare-chested. And there, over his heart, the scar glowed like a brand.
Lina’s birthmark burned in answer.
The door slammed shut behind her.
She spun around, her heart hammering, but the wood had sealed itself—no handle, no hinges, no way to escape. When she turned back, he was standing.
God.
He was tall. Far taller than any man had a right to be, his frame heavy with muscle that spoke of combat, not sport. His loose trousers hung low on his hips, the fabric ancient in design but pristine in condition, as though he’d put them on only moments ago.
His eyes never left hers.
“You’re late.”
The voice was the same. Gravel and honey. A sound that bypassed her ears and settled in her bones.
Lina’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Who—”
He stepped toward her. One step. Two. The candlelight flickered with each movement, the shadows dancing across his skin. “You know who I am.”
“I don’t—”
“You called my name.” Another step. Close enough now that she could see the details of his scar, the way it matched hers perfectly. “In the dream. You called, and I answered.”
“That was a dream.”
“Was it?” His hand lifted, hovering just beside her face without touching. His fingers trembled—slightly, almost imperceptibly, as though he was fighting the urge to reach for her. “Then why does your skin remember my hands? Why does your body know the shape of mine?”
Lina’s breath came short. “I don’t know you.”
“You knew me before this world existed.” His eyes glowed brighter, amber bleeding into gold. “You knew me before death claimed you, before I fell, before the gods themselves tore us apart. And you will know me again.”
He took the final step.
His hand found her face. His palm was warm, rough with calluses, and when his thumb brushed her cheekbone, her entire body shuddered.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
His lips curved. Not quite a smile.
“Your husband.”
