Chapter 5 Destined Meeting
Evelyn rose slowly, her eyes moving across the ruins of The Quirk.
The memories of her childhood had begun to blur at the edges, but her resolve had never been sharper. She would take this land back. Every broken stone of it.
Her hands closed into fists at her sides.
"I will find him," she murmured, her voice low and full of something that had been building for ten years.
She knew who was responsible. The man in the red cloak. The architect of her parents' deaths and the war that had erased her people. She would make him pay for all of it.
She looked down at the photo still in her hands. The last thing left of them, found in the rubble.
She couldn't face the Bloddy alone. That wasn't weakness. It was just the truth.
"The Hima are still out there," she said quietly, and she believed it. She was alive, which meant others could be too. They would be carrying the same rage, the same loss, the same ten years of waiting.
"They'd be hiding in Terran territory," she whispered.
It made sense. The Hima could adapt among humans far more easily than among the Bloddy. In Bloddy territory, the rule was simple: abandon your identity or leave. But blood couldn't be erased. Whatever name they wore, they were still Hima underneath.
Her parents had told her this when she was small. Stories about how their people survived, how they disappeared into the human world and endured. Those stories came back to her now, steadier than she expected.
"I have to go to Terran," she said. This time it wasn't a question.
The decision was made.
Evelyn stood at the top of a quiet hill and looked out over Terran territory as the morning came in pale and cold around her.
The wind moved through her hair. Her body was trembling, but not from the chill.
She had never set foot down there. The land spread out before her, unfamiliar and silent in the way that unknown things always are before they become real.
She drew a long breath, held it, and let it go.
"Easy, Eve," she murmured to herself. "It'll go the way it's supposed to."
She had slept in the ruins of The Quirk and woken before dawn. She had told herself she was ready. Standing here, looking down at it, her mind had filled with every worst possibility anyway.
What if the Bloddy caught her? What if she couldn't pass as someone who belonged?
She shook her head and pushed the thoughts aside. She couldn't afford to hesitate. The anger that had kept her alive for ten years wasn't something she was going to let doubt extinguish now.
She moved down the hill.
The moment she stepped into the crowd, everything stopped feeling like a plan.
People moved around her in all directions, dressed neatly, walking with the easy rhythm of people who had somewhere to be. They were staring. Not all of them, but enough.
Evelyn glanced down at herself.
"Nothing wrong with how I look," she muttered.
She squared her shoulders and kept moving, letting herself be carried by the flow of the street. Somewhere in this crowd, there might be a Hima. Every Hima could recognize one of their own by scent alone, something wordless and immediate that no amount of time or distance could dull.
She was still searching when it hit her.
Faint. Familiar. Unmistakable.
Her steps slowed. Her heartbeat picked up.
"Hima," she breathed, her eyes moving quickly left and right, cutting through the crowd.
"There." She had the direction locked before she finished the thought. The scent was growing stronger, coming from somewhere between the tall buildings ahead.
She started moving toward it, then caught herself. She was in Terran territory. She couldn't move the way she moved in Aloew, couldn't close distance in seconds or push through a crowd without being noticed. She had to match their pace. Unremarkable. Unhurried.
She slowed down and tried to look like she belonged.
She almost had the source when she walked directly into someone.
The collision knocked the breath out of her. Papers exploded into the air, scattering across the pavement in every direction. Coffee splashed across her white shirt in a wide, dark arc.
Evelyn hissed through her teeth, more at herself than at him. She had been so close.
She looked down. One of the papers had landed under her foot. She hesitated, then crouched and began gathering them.
Her hand closed around one sheet, and her eyes caught the text before she could stop them.
She read it once. Then again.
Her breathing slowed. Her gaze lifted to the man scrambling to collect his things.
"Oh, thank you!" he said, taking the papers from her without looking up, too flustered to notice the way she was watching him.
Evelyn said nothing.
She studied him. He wasn't Bloddy. There was no darkness to his aura, no scent of blood beneath his skin. He was entirely, ordinarily human.
Terran.
He finally glanced down and saw the stain spreading across her shirt.
"God, I'm so sorry," he said quickly, already reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief.
Before his hand could get anywhere near her, Evelyn stepped back.
"What do you think you're doing?" Her voice came out flat and sharp.
He raised both hands immediately. "I just wanted to clean up the coffee. That's all."
Evelyn looked down at her shirt. The stain was broad and dark and smelled bitter. She exhaled slowly, registering the problem. She hadn't brought a change of clothes.
The man in front of her looked genuinely pained about it.
"I'm sorry for startling you, and for the coffee. My name is Nathan Cornwall. I was in too much of a hurry and I made a mess of your shirt. I really am sorry."
Evelyn didn't answer. Her mind was still on what she had read.
He seemed to take her silence as discomfort. He reached into his pocket again and produced a small card, offering it with both hands.
"My contact details. For the dry cleaning, or whatever you need. Please."
Then he turned and disappeared into the crowd, moving quickly, like someone already late for something that couldn't wait.
Evelyn looked down at the card.
Nathan Cornwall. Folklore researcher, specialist in vampirology.
Her grip tightened slightly.
The words from his paper came back to her, details about human transformation into Hima, into something half-Terran and half-Bloddy.
She watched the space where he had vanished into the crowd.
"Why would a Terran want to know about Hima transformation?"
