Sanlang's penthouse was a mess of dimmed lights, scattered files, and half-empty glasses—evidence of the long night they had spent together. Not that Sanlang cared. His arms were folded, jaw tight, watching as Noor slid on her coat like she was about to walk out of his life all over again.
Maya, pacing near the windows, was on a call. "The jet needs to be ready in thirty minutes. Zeyla, do we have the reports?"
Zeyla, lounging on the couch, casually flicked through a tablet. "Board's in a panic. Shares are dropping. Usual nonsense."
Sanlang let out a dramatic sigh. "So this is how it ends? Another business crisis, another rushed exit?" He threw up his hands. "How original."
Noor barely spared him a glance as she adjusted her gloves. "It's urgent."
"Oh, of course," he snapped. "And what about me? Have you considered my suffering?" He gestured vaguely to himself. "What if I waste away in despair?"
Zeyla smirked. "I give it an hour before he orders takeout and falls asleep watching noir films."
Maya snorted. "More like thirty minutes before he's on the balcony, staring at the sky, whispering Madam Noor's name like a tragic lover."
Sanlang's glare could have set the room on fire. "You two are menaces."
Noor, ever the composed one, finally looked at him. "I'll be back."
Sanlang scoffed. "That's what villains say before disappearing for years."
Maya gasped. "Oh my God, she is the villain in your tragic romance."
Zeyla sighed dramatically. "Poor Sanlang, abandoned once again. When willour lady learn to cherish her fragile, emotional prince?"
Sanlang shot them a look of pure betrayal. "Et tu, Zeyla?"
Noor exhaled, stepping closer. "Try not to do anything stupid."
Sanlang crossed his arms. "Define stupid."
Noor gave him one last glance before turning away. The moment she reached the door, thunder rumbled in the distance.
Maya stared. "Did she just time her exit with the storm?"
Zeyla shook her head. "Unreal."
Sanlang clenched his fists. "I swear to God, if I wasn't madly in love with her, I'd—"
But he stopped and the trio left.
Hours passed after their departure and the door swung open again.
Yilan walked in. The air shifted.
Something about the way Yilan looked at him made Sanlang's stomach twist.
And then the words came.
By the time Yilan was finished, Sanlang could barely breathe.
And as the past surged through the cracks, a single name escaped his lips.
"…Azrael."
The city outside was a ruin of silver rain and neon ghosts.
Lightning split the sky apart. Thunder rolled in its wake, like the growl of something ancient and starved. The glass windows rattled, the chandeliers swayed—as if the world itself held its breath.
Sanlang sat still, his fingers curled so tightly around his glass that the crystal groaned in protest. The whiskey inside it no longer felt warm.
Across from him, Yilan's eyes were two empty chasms when she spoke.
"It was the night my parents died."
A simple sentence. Yet it dripped with finality.
"That same night, your father came home."
An unseen pressure sank into his chest, heavy.
His father—a monster among men. A man who had conquered empires in the dark, built his throne from war and whispers. A man who had seen it all—because he had orchestrated it.
Yet that night—
"He was shaking."
Sanlang's fingers went numb.
"Like a man who had seen the end of the world—and realized it had been staring back at him the whole time."
The storm outside screamed.
"He locked the doors."
Wind howled through the city, battering against the glass like a thousand unseen hands trying to force their way in.
"Bolted the windows."
Something primal curled in Sanlang's stomach.
"Covered the mirrors."
The breath in his lungs turned to ice.
"Then he sat down." Yilan's voice was a razor-thin thread. "Poured himself a drink. His hands wouldn't stop trembling."
A pulse throbbed in Sanlang's temple.
"He never drank it."
Outside, thunder roared.
"I sat with him for hours," Yilan continued, her voice eerie in its calm. "He didn't move. Didn't blink. Just kept whispering something under his breath."
Sanlang's throat was sandpaper.
"What did he say?"
Yilan didn't answer right away. Instead, she stared through him—no, beyond him.
"A name."
His mind refused to move.
"What name?"
For the first time that night—Yilan hesitated.
Her lips parted, but the air itself seemed to shudder around her.
Then—
She whispered it.
"Noor al Azraq."
The world stopped.
The storm outside shattered against the city, rain pounding like a war drum. The air in the room thickened.
Sanlang's pulse skipped.
The name crashed into him like a blade to the spine.
Something his body had known before his mind could remember.
"I asked him who she was."
The words came from far away.
"He wouldn't answer."
Sanlang's breathing turned shallow.
"He just kept whispering it. Over and over."
His fingers curled into fists.
"Like a prayer?"
Yilan laughed—a broken, hollow sound.
"No."
She met his gaze.
"Like a man speaking his own death sentence."
The storm outside shrieked.
Sanlang's heartbeat pounded in his ears.
"And the next morning?"
Yilan leaned back, tilting her head against the couch.
"Everything was gone."
The words settled into the room like funeral ash.
"Not fixed. Erased."
Sanlang felt the weight of something heavier than memory.
"The debts. The enemies. The threats. As if they had never existed."
The air was thick, choking.
"I don't know what he saw that night."
A flash of silver lightning burned against the skyline.
Yilan's voice cut through it like a blade.
"But whatever it was—it made a god tremble."
And somewhere, in the deepest marrow of his bones—
Sanlang remembered.
The storm raged outside, but it was Sanlang's silence that suffocated the room.
Yilan had spoken his name—her name—but even in the safety of glass and steel, it felt as if something was listening.
Something that should never be named.
"You don't know what she is," Yilan whispered. "You can't."
Sanlang laughed. A broken, bitter sound.
"You think I don't know?" His voice was raw, sharp enough to slice through bone. "You think you understand?"
His emerald eyes—once the envy of millions—now burned with something far uglier.
Something hollow.
Something ruined.
"No, Yilan," he murmured, voice dipping lower, almost tender.
"It's you who doesn't know who Noor is."
And then—Sanlang let go.
Let go of the world. Let go of time.
And fell back—
Back to the night the Angel of Death claimed him.
The underground hall was thick with cigar smoke and whiskey-tainted breath, walls lined with men who bought and sold lives like currency.
Sanlang knelt in the center of it all.
His wrists were bound, skin raw from steel cuffs. His silver hair, dirtied with sweat and dried blood, clung to his fevered skin.
He was a _____.
A fallen star.
The auctioneer's voice rang out, slicing through the haze of depravity.
"A rare one, gentlemen. A face once worshiped—now yours to break."
Laughter.
Numbers thrown like scraps.
"Ten million."
"Twenty!"
"Fifty!"
His head lolled forward.
Nothing mattered.
Nothing would ever matter again.
"One hundred."
"Two hundred."
"Three hundred million."
And then—
It happened.
A voice.
Silken. Lethal.
"One hundred billion."
Silence.
The kind that comes from real fear.
The air changed.
The room felt smaller.
Men who had been laughing now swallowed hard, eyes flickering toward the farthest shadows.
Sanlang felt it before he saw it.
The weight of something watching.
And then—she moved.
Like she had all the time in the world.
The air turned thick—like drowning in ink.
Sanlang forced his head up.
And there—she emerged from the dark.
Even hidden, she was…
She did not belong in this world.
Her Aura was like____Power rolled off her in slow, suffocating waves, pressing down, making it hard to breathe.
Men flinched.
The auctioneer's hands trembled around the gavel. His lips parted, but the words—died.
Sanlang felt his pulse hammering against his ribs.
He had been bought.
But this—this was not mercy.
She moved—sudden.
Gloved fingers curled under his chin.
Ice.
That's what she felt like.
Sanlang's breath hitched.
"'One hundred billion.'"
Yilan stiffened.
Sanlang let out a hollow laugh. "The room stopped. No one moved. No one breathed. Even the air seemed to hesitate."
His fingers curled against his knees.
"When… she came."
"Footsteps." Sanlang's voice dropped into something haunted. "Soft against the marble. A measured, eerie rhythm that sent something crawling up my spine."
"She didn't walk like a person. But moved like the inevitable."
A sharp inhale.
"And then I saw her."
His emerald eyes darkened, lost in something only he could see.
" veiled, draped in black, yet even hidden, she was…."
Sanlang's lips parted, as if trying to find words that didn't exist.
A muscle in his jaw tightened.
"She did not belong to this world."
Yilan's hands clenched.
"She walked down the steps, and men flinched. Grown men, killers, traffickers—men who had bathed in blood—sweated."
"She reached the stage. Did not speak. Did not ask." His breath hitched. "She only watched."
"And then…" Sanlang's voice was barely a whisper. "She crouched before me."
Yilan swallowed.
"Her hair touched the floor. Black. Endless. As if it was made from the night itself."
"A gloved hand lifted. Curled under my chin."
"Cold." His eyes burned. "Like touching something long dead."
Sanlang let out a breath that shuddered.
"And then I saw them."
"Her eyes."
Sanlang's body tensed.
"Black obsidian. As if they had swallowed the abyss whole. As if they had never known light."
"They weren't just looking at me. They were inside me. Peeling me open without a single touch."
A long pause.
"She leaned in—closer. A whisper. Soft. Final."
"'You belong to me now.'"
Yilan exhaled shakily, trying to speak, but Sanlang wasn't done.
His voice, raw with something old and unhealed, pressed on.
"That was the moment I realized, Yilan—" his eyes met hers, gleaming like molten silver in the dim light, "—she was no savior."
"She didn't rescue me out of mercy. She didn't save me because it was the right thing to do."
Yilan shivered.
"You've seen powerful women, Yilan. Ruthless women. Women who command the world. But Noor…" he shook his head.
"She commands something greater."
A bitter smirk.
"She does not bargain. She does not negotiate. She does not need permission."
"Men have kingdoms, Yilan. Noor has empires."
His voice turned cold.
"And if she wants something—if she claims it—" his breath was steady now, calm in a way that was almost terrifying, "—then the world will burn before it's taken from her."
A deep silence filled the space between them.
Yilan barely managed to whisper. "And you…?"
Sanlang tilted his head back, exhaling slowly.
"I was never taken, Yilan."
His gaze dropped back to hers.
"I was simply returned to where I had always belonged."