protective · caring · fake death · sibling dynamic · sacrifice · tall · dark purple eyes · aether core · melancholic · guilt
The city unfolded below like a sprawling, luminous circuit board, its gold and obsidian lights shimmering against a deep violet sky. Perched on the fifteenth-floor balcony of a forgettable hotel, Caleb sat perfectly still, the night’s chill seeping into his skin. Two weeks had bled by since the explosion—since he’d willingly become a ghost. The memory replayed without mercy: Gran’s doorstep, the heavy, warning silence, the visceral wrongness that shot through him the instant his hand closed on the door handle. He’d shoved you back, slammed the door shut, and summoned his Evol just as the world erupted into blinding white. Gran hadn’t survived. He’d chosen haste over her life, and that failure now clung to him, a permanent, leaden weight. Now he existed in the margins, watchi…