Paola stood at the edge of the deck beside Selene, both of them leaning just enough over the railing to feel the pull of the wind without risking the drop.

  Below them, the land rolled by in slow, breathtaking stretches. Dark, rich soil broken by winding rivers that caught the light like polished glass. Dense forests spread in uneven patches, old growth pressing close to the water, their canopies layered and alive. Wildflowers bloomed in reckless color wherever the earth opened enough to let them breathe—reds, blues, yellows scattered like careless paint. It looked untouched. Hungry. Full.

  Selene’s eyes followed the ground without expression.

  Paola broke the silence, because she always did.

  “Still wild,” she said. “Feels… younger than Valarian.”

  Selene nodded once. “Less scarred.”

  Paola smiled faintly. “You remember how we met?”

  Selene’s jaw tightened, just slightly. “Unfortunately.”

  Paola laughed under her breath. “Hey, I thought it was memorable.”

  “A cave. A storm. You tried to fight it.”

  “Okay, first of all,” Paola said, lifting a finger, “it looked fightable.”

  “It was a storm that hunted,” Selene replied flatly. “With teeth.”

  Paola snorted. “Details.”

  The memory rose anyway. Stone walls vibrating. Wind screaming through tunnels. A beast made of pressure and lightning, its body a living storm that fed on treasure, swallowing magic and metal alike to grow stronger. They’d hidden in the eye of it, breath held, hearts pounding.

  “I really thought I had it,” Paola said quietly. “Then it grabbed me.”

  Selene’s fingers curled around the railing.

  “She slammed me into the ground,” Paola continued, voice casual in the way only distance allowed. “Over and over. I remember the sound more than the pain. Bones breaking. Then… nothing.”

  “You died,” Selene said.

  “Yeah.” Paola shrugged. “Turns out that’s how I learned I’m T’shal’ara. Surprise lineage reveal.”

  Selene glanced at her then, eyes unreadable. “You came back.”

  Paola grinned. “Hard to get rid of me.”

  The wind filled the space again.

  “I owed you,” Selene said after a moment. “Then I owed Poca.”

  Paola tilted her head. “You still think you do.”

  Selene didn’t deny it. “I stole from her. A sacred thing.”

  “And you’ve spent months trying to make up for it,” Paola said gently. “Even after she forgave you.”

  “Forgiveness does not erase debt,” Selene replied.

  Paola hummed. “You know… we’re kind of in the same club.”

  Selene arched a brow.

  “Shunned,” Paola said. “Misunderstood. Conveniently feared.”

  Selene looked down at herself. Ash-grey skin. Void-dark aura barely restrained. “You hide better.”

  “Yeah,” Paola admitted. “Fur and ears get weird looks. Horns and void magic get torches.”

  Selene exhaled slowly. “Society prefers monsters that can pass.”

  They stood there together, watching rivers carve paths through the earth far below.

  For once, Selene didn’t move away.

  And for Paola, that felt like progress.

  Paola shifted her weight, tail flicking once as she searched for the right words.

  “I know it’s not the same,” she said. “I mean… I get stared at. People whisper. But demons?” She glanced at Selene, careful. “That’s a whole different level of shunned. I don’t really know what that’s like.”

  Selene didn’t bristle. Didn’t deflect. She stayed as she always was, still, composed, eyes on the land below.

  “I know,” Selene said simply.

  That wasn’t what surprised Paola.

  Selene turned then, just slightly, studying her with an expression Paola couldn’t quite place. Not suspicion. Not judgment.

  Confusion.

  “You are a Fallen Star,” Selene said. “Or close enough that most would not bother arguing the difference.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Paola blinked. “Uh… yeah?”

  “In this world,” Selene continued, voice calm, “Fallen Stars are spoken of as legends. As weapons. As turning points. They are the ones who broke gods, who became gods, who rewrote what the world was allowed to be.”

  She paused, eyes narrowing a fraction as if the thought still didn’t settle right.

  “And yet,” Selene said, “you are… normal.”

  Paola stared at her.

  “…Thanks?” she said, unsure if she’d just been insulted or complimented.

  Selene actually chuckled. A quiet sound, brief but real. “That reaction,” she said, “is exactly what I mean.”

  She leaned back against the railing, arms folding loosely. “I expected haughtiness. Or reverence. Or at least the awareness of being more.”

  She searched for the word, then shook her head. “Holiness. Perhaps.”

  Paola nodded slowly. She understood what Selene was saying. At least the shape of it.

  “I don’t feel like that,” Paola admitted. “I don’t wake up thinking I’m destined or sacred or anything. I wake up thinking about breakfast. Or if Yasmin blew something up. Or if Oso broke into the storage room again.”

  Selene studied her in silence.

  “This is who I am,” Paola went on, a little firmer now. “I didn’t become this on purpose. I didn’t ask for bloodlines or paths or gods whispering at me. I’m just… me.”

  She shrugged. “There’s nothing godly about it.”

  Selene looked back out over the land, thoughtful.

  “That,” she said quietly, “may be the most unsettling thing about you.”

  Paola laughed, the sound light, and leaned her elbows on the railing again.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Being normal in a world of gods and titans can be unsettling.”

  “So,” the woman said, leaning against the railing beside him like she owned the space, “you’re an undead.”

  Evan froze.

  Not physically. He had mastered stillness. But mentally? Absolute system crash.

  Her name was Mira. He knew that much because she’d reintroduced herself about thirty seconds ago, and he had immediately forgotten everything else he’d ever known about the universe. She was tall, dark sun-kissed skin glowing against the blue sky, dark hair braided loosely over one shoulder, strands escaping and clinging to her neck from the clouds they’d drift through. Her shirt was half-laced, half-negotiated into staying on, and her stance was relaxed in a way that suggested she’d never once felt unsafe in her own body. Muscles, scars, confidence. Dangerous in the quiet way.

  If Evan still had a heart, it would have been attempting escape.

  “I am not undead,” he said quickly.

  Mira tilted her head, studying his hooded, gloved, fully covered form. “You’re a skeleton.”

  “Yes, but that’s unrelated.”

  She blinked. Once. Then smiled wider. “Explain.”

  “Well,” Evan said, lifting a finger, “I died on another planet.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And I stayed dead there.”

  “So far, not helping your case.”

  “But then I came here,” he continued, warming to his own logic, “into this body. Which was already like this. So I didn’t die here.”

  She crossed her arms. Her posture somehow made it worse. “So you died, and then came back.”

  “No, I died and stayed dead, and then appeared somewhere else alive.”

  “That’s coming back.”

  “That’s relocating.”

  “From death.”

  “From another plane of existence.”

  “Which is death-adjacent.”

  Evan sighed. “You’re simplifying it.”

  “You’re complicating it.”

  He rubbed the back of his skull, producing a faint clicking sound. “Undead implies necromancy. Raised corpse. Reanimation. I was… imported.”

  Mira grinned. “Imported from the afterlife.”

  “From Earth.”

  “Where you died.”

  “Yes, but that was a different death!”

  She stared at him.

  He stared back.

  Silence.

  “…You see how this isn’t helping, right?” Evan muttered.

  “So,” she said sweetly, “you died. You’re a skeleton. You walk, talk, and argue semantics. That’s undead.”

  “I have consciousness continuity,” he countered. “No reanimation spell. No corpse corruption. I just… switched vessels.”

  “That sounds like undead with extra steps.”

  He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “…I hate that you’re kind of right.”

  Mira laughed, the sound warm and effortless. “You’re adorable when you’re defensive.”

  Evan nearly short-circuited.

  “I’m not adorable. I’m existentially complex.”

  “And undead.”

  “…I am losing this argument, aren’t I?”

  She tapped his chest lightly with one finger. “Buddy. You’re a walking skeleton in a cloak. You never had it.”

  Evan shook his head slowly, the faint click of bone on bone giving him away. “I walked into that argument with confidence,” he muttered. “That was my first mistake.”

  “Hmm?” came a familiar voice.

  Yucca slipped in beside him with quiet ease, white hair lifting gently as the wind rolled across the deck. There was a soft smile on her lips, the kind she reserved for moments that amused her but didn’t require comment yet. The sky behind her was impossibly blue, clouds drifting past in slow, lazy sheets as the airship cut cleanly through them.

  “What are we discussing?” she asked.

  Evan didn’t even look at Mira. He just raised a hand in her direction, palm up, as if presenting a problem that had grown teeth.

  Mira leaned on the railing opposite them, dark skin warm against the light, one hip cocked in effortless defiance of gravity. Her hair fluttered lazily in the wind, eyes half-lidded, amused. The navigator looked entirely too comfortable for someone accusing a man of being undead.

  “I’m saying he’s undead,” Mira said easily. “He’s saying he’s not.”

  Yucca blinked once. “Ah.”

  Evan straightened. “I am alive.”

  Yucca turned her head slightly toward him, listening.

  Mira tilted her head. “He died.”

  “On another planet,” Evan corrected.

  “Still died,” Mira replied.

  Yucca’s smile didn’t fade, but something in her eyes sharpened. “Explain.”

  Evan seized the opportunity. “I can feel things. I experience temperature, pressure, pain. I eat. I sleep. I blink.”

  “You don’t blink,” Mira said immediately.

  “I—” Evan paused. “…I simulate blinking.”

  Mira smirked. “I’ve seen you eat.”

  “Yes,” Evan said proudly.

  “And the food just disappears,” she continued. “No chewing. No swallowing. Just… gone.”

  “That is a metaphysical digestion process,” Evan snapped. “It counts.”

  Yucca hummed softly. “Does it?”

  “Yes,” Evan said firmly, then added, “I think.”

  Mira leaned closer, elbows on the railing now, clearly enjoying herself. “So if the food vanishes, where does it go?”

  “My soul,” Evan replied without missing a beat.

  Yucca paused.

  Mira laughed. “See? Undead.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Evan protested. “Undead don’t metabolize.”

  “You don’t metabolize,” Mira shot back. “You vanish groceries.”

  Yucca glanced at Evan again. “You do feel pain?”

  “Yes,” Evan said. “Emotionally and physically. Extra on the emotional right now.”

  “And hunger?”

  “Yes.”

  “And fear?”

  “Constantly,” Evan replied.

  Yucca nodded slowly. Then she looked at Mira. “And yet… he does not exhibit necromantic bindings.”

  “Could be subtle,” Mira said, shrugging. “Or fancy.”

  Yucca’s fingers brushed Evan’s sleeve, light and brief, almost accidental. “He is… unusually warm,” she said thoughtfully.

  Evan perked up. “See?”

  Mira squinted. “Warm undead.”

  “That’s not a thing,” Evan said.

  “It is now,” Mira replied, smiling at him in a way that made his internal systems entirely unreliable.

  Yucca’s smile tightened just a fraction. Barely noticeable. “Regardless,” she said calmly, “Evan’s state is unique. Classification may be… flexible.”

  Evan sagged in relief. “Thank you.”

  Mira pushed off the railing, stretching lazily. “Call it whatever you want,” she said. “Skeleton boy’s still cute.”

  Evan froze.

  Yucca did not look at him.

  The wind carried the ship forward through the clouds, sunlight breaking around them as Evan stood there, entirely unaware of the delicate tension forming at his sides, and very aware that he was never, ever winning the undead argument.