“Athanasius?” I rasp, though I can't hear my own voice. Something has shifted.
And then he changed.
I don't need to see him fully to know it. The pressure in the room tells me everything.
He expands—unfolds—into something too vast for this space. A shape that makes the walls feel too close, the ceiling too low. Four eyes glow dimly, stacked in unnatural symmetry, watching everything and nothing. His four arms flex outward, joints bending in ways that defy bone and reason. Kenneth’s breath hitches into a sharp whimper.
“Where... where am I?” Kenneth chokes, his voice trembling like a sparrow’s heartbeat. He stumbles back, hitting the shadowy wall.
Athanasius looms over him, eyes burning in the murk like embers in deep ash.
“Ione isnot for you,” he says, his voice echoing too many times for one mouth. “She is my avatar. I am death. I am darkness. I existed before light. Before breath. Beforeyou.”
Kenneth whimpers again, clutching his stomach like he might vomit. His face is slick with sweat. The scent of his fear is metallic and salty.
“If you pursue her…” Athanasius leans in, each eye narrowing in perfect sync. “...you forfeit your life.”
The silence stretches, alive and writhing. Kenneth’s breath hitches into a sob.
“Is she worth it?” Athanasius hisses, voice suddenly quiet and intimate. “Is Ione worth your life?”
Kenneth doesn't answer. Can't. He shakes his head once, rapid and desperate. “N-no. No,” he croaks.
“Good,” Athanasius says, his voice cracking like thunder under a blue sky. “Now run. Before I remind you why your kind feared the dark.”
Light begins to bleed back into the room—slow, like sunrise over a grave. The shadows recede, and Athanasius folds himself back down into his human form, skin and bone reassembling into familiarity.
Kenneth doesn't wait. He bolts, nearly tripping over a chair leg on his way out, the door flinging wide in his wake.
I stare after him, numb, my lungs finally dragging in air like I’d surfaced from a long dive.
The music begins to pour back into the room, people move and mill about none the wiser. Athanasius turns to me. “We’re leaving.”
I blink at him. My heart thuds unevenly, part fear, part fury. “You didn’t let me speak to him.”
“You will not speak toanyman but me,” he says flatly.
I clench my fists. “You don’t get to decide that! You don’t know him.” I do not give a shit that people are beginning to stare at us. "I do not belong to you, Athanasius, I can decide what I want to do."
He waves dismissively. “He didn’t want to know you. He wanted your body.” Athanasius’s voice is cold, devoid of warmth, he's not even trying to let me down easily. “And you’restupidfor not noticing.”
That hurts. He didn't have to say it like that. I swing. It's instinct. Rage. Hurt.
He catches my wrist before the slap lands, fingers like iron. “Don’t hit,” he says, low, pulling me close to him. Not threatening. Just... final.
Before I can yank away, he pulls me sharply toward him, toward the far corner where the shadows still lingered thick and alive. I can feel them wrapping around my legs, my thighs, climbing to hold me around my waist.
And then—nothing.
No transition. No movement.
Just shadow swallowing us whole.
When I open my eyes again, we are in my house. Same curtains. Same quiet hum of the ceiling fan. But the memory of him—towering, inhuman,eternal—pressed against my skin like a bruise.
We're standing in the living room, and Athanasius in his true form, he releases my wrist gently now, but I fall onto the couch.
He's still scary. But not for me. Not fully. And maybe that makes it worse. "You're ridiculous." I snap at him.
