"Ahhh, I miss home already," lamented a young man who appeared to be about eighteen years old. He was quite tall, standing at 188 cm, with dark hair and light skin.

He had just opened the door to his cheap student apartment. The building itself was a drab, gray structure with peeling paint and narrow, dimly lit hallways.

The windows were small and lined with rusting metal frames, giving the place a forlorn and neglected appearance. Today was his first day in the city, and he was already feeling homesick.

"Whoever said college life was going to be fun, I'll curse that human scum," he muttered under his breath, bringing out his phone and connecting his cheap wired earphones. He was either too cheap or too broke to afford the fancy wireless ones that youths his age used.

Even his phone was the flagship model from two years ago, and she meant the whole world to him. Yes, she. This was the world of a poor man; it had, after all, cost him an arm and a leg to afford it.

He set the music to shuffle and started walking under the moonlit night. The night was crisp and cold, with a gentle breeze that rustled the few remaining leaves on the trees.

After all, it was August, so he had worn his hoodie. It was 11:30 PM, and his apartment was a mess, with all sorts of moving boxes strewn about. He resolved to unpack tomorrow since it was Saturday. Lost in thought, he didn't realize that he had already walked a fair distance.

This part of the city was surprisingly quiet at night. The streetlights cast long shadows, and the silence was broken only by the distant hum of traffic.

Noticing someone in the distance, he couldn't quite make out the figure, but he guessed it was a woman.

She was approaching him, her movements slow and deliberate.

As she grew closer, he came to the realization that she was dressed in what seemed to be a dark dress with one of those slim corsets you saw in medieval movies.

She was extraordinarily beautiful, with long dark locks cascading down her back. Her skin was pale, almost luminous under the faint light, and her eyes were violet, deep pools that seemed to hold untold secrets. She didn't look out of place in this silent night; it was almost as if she belonged to the night itself.

The jewels she wore on her hips and neck, which glimmered faintly, were mere instruments that added to her charm. The fool found himself staring, trying to keep a calm and nonchalant expression, though his heart was pounding in his chest.

The lady looked about his age, but she didn't seem to notice him and walked by with a wistful expression, her gaze distant as if she were lost in another world.

He walked a few steps ahead when he noticed the lights from behind; it seemed to be from a truck, but he didn't mind it until he noticed the subtle but dangerous way it was moving.

The headlights sliced through the darkness, casting eerie shadows along the deserted street. He remained calm, knowing he wasn't in the way, only to notice the dark-haired young woman was on the road, apparently lost in thought, and the truck was fast approaching. Without much thought, he sprang into action.

Moving as fast as his legs could carry him, he rammed into the woman, successfully pushing her out of the truck's way.

However, his momentum was not enough to carry him out of harm's way. With a bone-crunching sound and the splat of what could only be his flesh and innards, he became a pile of blood and bones on the street.

His bones and flesh were mangled, his blood soaking through his black hoodie and pooling around him in a gruesome display. The hoodie, which had once provided warmth, now clung to his broken body, saturated with the essence of his life.

His body felt hot; it hurt. His vision blurred, and he could only faintly hear voices, distorted and distant, as if they were coming from underwater.

From the distance, he saw what appeared to be the beautiful dark-haired woman, her figure hazy and ethereal in his fading sight.

"Ahhh," he gasped, but the blood caught in his throat, choking him.

'Is that the angel of death?' he thought as the world fell dark.

The middle-aged truck driver had hurriedly jumped out of the truck, his face pale with shock and panic.

The young lady looked at him briefly before turning her attention to the boy who was now dead in every sense of the word. She had heard his final gasp for air as life left him.

She wondered who he was and why he had done that.

"I suppose I'll have to inquire of him then," she said, her voice soft but with an air of authority.

The truck driver was in a panic, fumbling with his phone as he called for an ambulance.

But she knew it was pointless; he had perished shortly after impact. The bloodied remains on the street were all that was left of his brief life.

A few minutes later, the familiar sounds of sirens filled the night, and emergency responders arrived quickly—perhaps not quickly enough.

Then again, even if they had been, he would still have died. No human technology or miracle would have saved him, well, except if one of them had been a mage with masterful control over magic.

She sighed, thinking of those humans who held such power. Not this one, though; he was as mundane as the others. But he had died for her, a stranger; he almost seemed like a character straight out of a fairy tale.

"How peculiar," she whispered, observing his lifeless body.

While she was lost in thought, the human physicians or medics, whatever the humans called them, had picked up the scraps of his remains and loaded him onto what seemed to be a stretcher.

The scene was grim, with the medics working in silence, their faces grim under the harsh fluorescent lights of the ambulance.

"Why though? He's already dead," she muttered to herself, though she recalled a simple piece of trivia she had learned before coming to the mundane world: the human medics couldn't put him in a body bag until a doctor had officially pronounced him dead.

So she silently disappeared into the night, fading away like mist in the wind.

The ambulance drove off to the nearest hospital. She observed from the shadows as he was identified and taken into a room in the hospital before a doctor officially declared him dead.

The middle-aged doctor, his face weary from years of seeing such tragedies, sighed before making the declaration.

"Ali Asad, a shame to die so young," the doctor said indifferently, with a somewhat deranged glint in his eyes.

"Yes, sir," replied the nurse as she and two other nurses pushed the body out of the room.

The corpse of Ali Asad was moved to the morgue and left there by the nurses. The cold, sterile environment of the morgue was eerily silent, the air heavy with the scent of disinfectant.

"Has the family been contacted yet?" asked a male nurse to the female nurse.

"Yes, they have," she replied coolly. She shut the door behind them gently, as if afraid to wake the deceased.

As soon as they had left, a dark-haired lady entered the morgue. She walked past two other bodies that had labels on their toes, each one a reminder of the fragility of life. The bodies were covered with white sheets, the labels dangling from their toes like macabre tags identifying the remains.

She stopped. "Ahhh, there you are. I finally found you," she said in a mirthless tone, her voice echoing slightly in the cold room.

"Now, let us learn your name and become mine from this day forth," she added in a steady tone, her words carrying a weight of finality.

She placed her palm above his head and began to chant:

"O Death, release thy grip on this soul, For I, Carrisa Evernight, claim him whole. From this day, he walks by my side, Bound by my will, no longer denied. Ali Asad, rise from thy grave, In my name, Alicarde, thou art reborn."

As soon as she completed her words, the shadows in the room deepened, and a chilling wind swept through the dimly lit space.

The air seemed to grow thick with an otherworldly presence, and the temperature dropped sharply. As the wind disappeared, so did she, fading away into the shadows, leaving behind an eerie stillness.

His eyes gently opened. The room felt bright, but he quickly noticed that there was only one light on, flickering slightly as if unsure whether to stay lit or plunge the room back into darkness.

He was naked, with a small box by his side containing his phone and other belongings, including his clothes, which had a heavy smell of blood. It was nauseating, hitting him like a tidal wave.

He grabbed his blood-soaked pants and black hoodie; the blood, now dried, was less noticeable in the dim light, but the pungent odor was unmistakable.

Then he felt something within him stir—an intense pull, a strong call to a place he did not know. His heart pounded, his mind urging him to go toward the source of this mysterious beckoning.

Without wasting any more time, he grabbed his belongings and bolted out of the morgue, barely registering the cold sterility of the room or the presence of other lifeless bodies.

The air felt thick, as if it were pressing down on him, but his focus was entirely on the overwhelming urge pulling him forward. The fluorescent lights above flickered, casting unsettling shadows on the cold, tiled floor. His clothes, soaked in his own blood, clung to him, sticky and uncomfortable.

The smell was suffocating, a nauseating blend of iron and decay, but he pushed the discomfort aside, his mind singularly driven.

Stumbling into the dimly lit hallway, his eyes squinted against the harsh lighting. His vision swam, the world around him spinning as he tried to find his bearings.

His footsteps echoed unnervingly in the silence, each step feeling heavy and disjointed as if he were trudging through mud. Just as he thought he might collapse, he collided with a nurse.

The shock on her face morphed into sheer terror as she recognized him, her scream piercing through the stillness of the night.

He barely reacted, his mind too clouded by the compulsion driving him. Spotting the glowing green exit sign ahead, he ignored the pounding in his chest and bolted through the hospital doors into the cool night air.

The sharp contrast between the stifling hospital and the crispness of the outside world momentarily cleared his head, but the pull grew stronger, almost painful now, as if his very soul was being dragged towards an unknown destination.

Meanwhile, the nurse, still trembling, sprinted through the hospital's labyrinthine corridors until she crashed into the middle-aged doctor.

"Doctor Stein, he woke up again, that co... co... boy, that boy, he woke up, he's alive again, I saw him," she said, trembling.

Her words tumbled out in a panicked rush, but Dr. Stein's reaction was immediate. His face twisted with a mix of disbelief and urgency, emotions battling for dominance.

"Find him now! Don't let him escape the hospital!" he bellowed, but it was already too late.

Ali was gone, tearing through the streets at an impossible speed, his feet barely touching the ground.

His thoughts were a whirlwind of confusion and desperation, but one thing was clear—he had to find the source of the call. His surroundings blurred as he ran, his heart pounding not just from exertion but from the strange, inexplicable force compelling him forward.