Music played somewhere — low, grainy, barely audible over the storm. The kind of song you'd put on at 2am when sleep felt impossible and your thoughts wouldn't shut up.

Empty beer bottles crowded the coffee table. Overflowing ashtrays. Sketchbooks stacked at odd angles, pages spilling out with half-finished drawings — a city skyline, a pair of hands, a man's silhouette that never quite got a face.

To anyone else, the place would look chaotic. Abandoned. But every mess sat exactly where she'd left it. Every ashtray, every bottle, every sketchbook. Organized in the way only she understood.

Y/N was curled on the couch, knees tucked beneath her in an oversized hoodie that hung past her thighs. Black shorts peeked out underneath. One leg bounced restlessly, a nervous rhythm she couldn't control. She lifted a cigarette to glossy lips, inhaling slow, letting the burn steady her shaking fingers.

But nothing was steady tonight.

Her heart hammered. Too fast. Too hard. That familiar pressure had started an hour ago, coiling beneath her ribs like something alive. Clawing. Tightening. Making each breath feel shallow.

She squeezed her eyes shut, dragging a trembling hand through long black hair that spilled down her back. Hair that still smelled faintly of rain and cigarette smoke from earlier.

"Not now..." she whispered, barely audible. A plea. A prayer. She pressed the heel of her palm hard against her sternum, as if she could physically slow the pounding.

It didn't work.

The panic grew sharper. Hot. Her chest tightened until her vision blurred at the edges. The room felt too small. Too empty. Too loud with only the storm —

And then.

Thud.

Another heartbeat — deep, slow, male — echoed inside her chest like someone standing directly behind her. So close she could almost feel the warmth of another body.

Thud.

Thud.

Her breathing eased. The edges sharpened again. The fear loosened its grip, fading into something softer, steadier. Calm flooded through her veins like warm water. Not hers. His.

Somewhere out there, he felt her again.

She pressed trembling fingers against the soulmate scar stretching beneath her ribs, tracing the raised lines through the fabric of her hoodie. A jagged mark she'd woken up with years ago and never fully understood.

Then pain exploded through her side. Sharp. Violent. Real.

She cried out, doubling forward as something hot and wet soaked through her shirt. Her beer bottle slipped from numb fingers and shattered across the floor. Glass scattered. Foam hissed against the wood.

She looked down, hand pressed to her side, and felt it.

Warm blood. Soaking into the fabric. Fresh.

Fresh stab wound.

Fresh pain.

Somewhere across the city, a man was dying. And she could feel every second of it.