Morning broke over the city of Blue, casting golden light across quiet rooftops and sleepy streets. But inside the residence, something was wrong.
Ember's mother stood at the foot of her bed, her voice trembling as she called out, "Ember, sweetheart... you're going to be late for college." There was no reply. Only the soft ticking of the wall clock filled the silence.
Frowning, she stepped into the dim room and flicked on the light. Ember didn't stir. She hadn't been to college in over a week—her injury had kept her confined to bed, and even her medical leave had ended. But this... this felt different. Something was off.
With a worried sigh, her mother moved closer and gently pulled back the blanket. And then she saw it—blood. A crimson stain seeping through the bandage wrapped around Ember's head.
"Oh my God... EMBER!" she screamed, her voice breaking as she called for her husband. "Come quickly!"
Moments later, her father rushed into the room, his face paling when he saw their daughter lying unconscious, her lips pale, her forehead damp with sweat.
"She was fine last night," her mother whispered, panic rising in her throat. "She was smiling... she even kissed me goodnight. What happened to her, James? What happened after she closed her eyes?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he turned to Zen, his voice sharp. "Call Dr. Zayne. Now."
As Ember's mother shook her gently, trying to rouse her, Ember's body remained limp, locked in some unseen nightmare. Her father reached for the phone again.
"We're not waiting," he said grimly. "Call the ambulance."
Just next door, Zen stood at Dr. Zayne's doorstep, breathless and trembling. His knuckles were white as he rang the bell. Moments later, the door swung open, and Zayne blinked in surprise at the unexpected visitor.
"Zen...? What the—" he began, but the words caught in his throat when he saw the tears streaming down Zen's face.
"It's Ember..." Zen choked, barely able to speak. "She's hurt. Please, come quickly—she's not waking up!"
Zayne's heart skipped a beat. The color drained from his face. Without a second thought, he snatched his coat from the stand and bolted past Zen, his mind spinning, fear curling in his gut like smoke.
When they arrived at Ember's home, Zayne didn't hesitate. He rushed and stormed into her room—then froze.
There she was. Ember lay motionless, her skin pale, her body unnaturally still. She looked... empty. Like the very soul had been stolen from her in the night.
Zayne stepped closer, his hands trembling as he leaned over her. The bandage on her forehead was soaked in fresh blood. It hadn't even begun to dry.
"She needs to be hospitalized," he said, his voice taut with urgency.
Ember's father nodded. "I called an ambulance—"
"It'll take too long," Zayne interrupted sharply, already moving toward the door. "Zen, get my car keys from the table at my house. I'll take her myself."
Zen didn't waste a second, dashing out the door.
Zayne turned to Ember's parents, who stood frozen in the corner, trying to look strong but failing. He saw right through the calm they wore like armor.
"I know this is hard to process," he said softly but firmly, "but right now, I need you both to breathe. Stay here. Be patient. I'll admit Ember and stabilize her myself. Once she's safe, I'll call you. Then you can come see her."
He looked back at Ember—her fragile frame, her bloodstained bandage, her barely-there breath.
"Don't give up on me now, Ember," he whispered under his breath, brushing a lock of hair from her face. "I swear I won't let anything happen to you... not while I'm still breathing."
Outside, Zen's footsteps echoed through the hallway , he handover the keys to Zayne. Time was slipping through their fingers—and no one knew what had really happened the night Ember closed her eyes.
Her parents nodded, their eyes glassy with unshed tears. "Please... take care of her," her mother whispered, barely holding herself together.
Zayne gave a solemn nod, his voice low but firm. "I will."
He leaned down and gently lifted Ember into his arms. Her body felt too light, too fragile—like she could disappear if he wasn't careful. He carried her to his car with deliberate urgency, cradling her like something sacred.
As he slid into the driver's seat, one hand gripping the wheel and the other protectively resting over Ember's lifeless hand, he called the hospital. "Prepare the operating room. I'm reaching in less than a minute."
The car tore down the near-empty streets, sirens in the distance wailing like a countdown.
At the hospital, everything blurred. Zayne stormed through the emergency entrance with Ember in his arms, nurses scrambling as he brought her straight into surgery. No time for forms. No time for questions.
Inside the operating room, Zayne's gloves were already on. He peeled away the blood-soaked bandage from Ember's head, and what he saw made his chest tighten. The bandage wasn't stopping the bleeding—it was just absorbing it. She had already lost too much.
"Start the transfusion," he ordered. Blood. She needed blood first—everything else came second.
As he worked, he spotted a gash on her hand and began stitching it with practiced precision. But something didn't add up. The wound was small... yet the blood loss was dangerously high.
Hemophilia? he thought, eyes narrowing. But her parents don't carry that. That doesn't make sense...
He paused, breathing hard, then looked again—and noticed something else.
Her ring finger.
It was bandaged too, almost as if someone had tried to hide it. When Zayne carefully unwrapped the cloth, his heart clenched.
There was no ring. But there had been one. The skin where it had rested was bruised and raw—like someone had forcefully ripped it off.
Someone who didn't want her wearing it.
"I think I know who did this to you," Zayne muttered through gritted teeth, fury boiling in his chest.
The boy she had been calling her boyfriend. The one she'd defended, even when she got hurt the first time. Zayne's jaw clenched.
I should have seen it. I should have known.
Anger simmered in his gut—not just toward the man who had hurt her, but at himself. For not protecting her. For being too late.
He finished treating the injury on her finger and checked her pulse. It was stable now. Normal.
But her face... her face still looked lifeless. Hollow. Like she was trapped somewhere far away, beyond his reach.
Zayne sat beside her, unable to hold back anymore. He took her hand gently in his own and whispered,
"Please wake up, Ember... I haven't even told you how I feel." His voice cracked. "Please come back to me. Don't leave me like this."
His thumb traced slow circles over her hand, as if his touch could call her soul back from wherever it had gone.
And somewhere—beneath that still body, in a world neither of them could see—Ember heard him.
But she wasn't alone in that place.
He was there too.
Yor boyfriend
And he wasn't going to let her go without a fight.
A nurse stepped quietly into the room, her shoes clicking softly against the sterile floor. Her voice was hesitant, careful not to disturb the fragile quiet.
"Sir, I couldn't find any family members to complete the paperwork. Who should fill the form?"
Zayne didn't look up immediately. His gaze was still fixed on Ember's face—so pale, so still.
"Hand it over to me," he said at last, holding out his hand. "I'll fill it."
The nurse paused, looking at him a little more closely. "And... who are you to her, if you don't mind me asking?"
Zayne froze for a second.
Who was he to her? A neighbor? A friend? A doctor? None of it felt right.
Then, something in his chest softened. He let out a breath and smiled faintly.
"I'm her boyfriend," he said.
The nurse raised a brow, a small smile forming on her lips. "Alright, then. Fill it out and hand it in at the counter when you're done."
"I will," Zayne said softly.
He filled out the paperwork carefully, his pen pausing only briefly before writing "relationship: boyfriend." The word felt heavy and right all at once. When it was done, he arranged for Ember to be moved into a VIP room—somewhere quiet, private, where no one could disturb her.
He didn't want to leave her. Every part of him screamed to stay by her side. But someone had done this to her, and he wasn't going to let them get away with it.
Not again.
Reluctantly, he left the hospital and drove back to Ember's house. Her parents met him at the door, panic barely hidden beneath their tired eyes.
"She's stable now," Zayne told them gently. "She should wake up by evening... she lost a lot of blood, but she's strong."
Tears glistened in her mother's eyes. They thanked him, hurriedly grabbing their things before heading to the hospital to be with their daughter.
As they stepped out, a calm voice broke the silence from the hallway.
"Do you mind if I take a look around Ember's room?"
Ember's parents hesitated, then nodded.
"Of course," her father said. "Just... be respectful. It's still her space."
They left moments later, unaware of the storm quietly brewing in the house they had just handed over to him.
The door creaked open by Zayne.
Ember's room stood still, cloaked in silence and shadows, the kind that whispered of secrets too old to speak and too fresh to ignore.
Zayne exhaled slowly, stepping inside like he was walking into a memory—one lined with pastel walls, childhood trophies, and the faint scent of fruity peaches. But something was wrong. Something missing.
"Come on, Ember," he murmured to the room itself. "Tell me what happened to you."
He moved carefully, scanning for anything—anything—that might explain how she ended up unconscious, blood-soaked, barely breathing. His eyes landed on her phone, lying innocently on the nightstand.
Locked.
He tried her birthday. Nothing. Her mother's name. Still nothing. After a few failed attempts, the screen flashed coldly:
Locked for 30 minutes.
Zayne swore under his breath and kept searching. His hands rifled through drawers, bookshelves . His mind raced—where's the ring? Where's the shirt she bought with me just last time?
Missing.
Everything felt... off. Like someone had scrubbed her life clean of traces.
Then something caught his eye—a corner of a book peeking out from under the long, draped bedsheet of her bed.
He knelt, pulled it free, and whispered, "Her diary."
The leather cover was worn, soft with age. When he flipped it open, the first thing he saw, scrawled in bold ink across the inside cover, stopped him cold:
Dylan.
Just his name. No context. No explanation. Like she didn't need to hide it. Not from herself.
Zayne stared at it, heart dropping into something darker.
"He's the one," he muttered.
He picked up her phone again, typed in Dylan.
Unlocked.
His stomach twisted. Whatever this Dylan meant to Ember—it was deep. Intimate. Trusted.
But as he searched her contacts, her call logs, her messages—there was nothing. No number saved under Dylan. No chat. No photos. Not a trace.
He opened her photo gallery.
Still nothing.
Like he never existed.
Zayne's pulse quickened. "That's impossible…" he whispered, mind spinning.
He dropped the phone and opened the diary again. This time, he didn't try to read her thoughts—he flipped straight to the back. And there, like a breadcrumb left behind, was a number scribbled in looping ink.
He didn't hesitate.
He dialed it.
One ring.
Two.
Three...
Then someone picked up.
But no one spoke.
There was only silence on the other end—watching silence.
Zayne's voice was cold, sharp with anger. "I know what you did to her. And I swear... you'll regret it."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, In the city Haliçis.
When Ember was found unconscious in her room by her parents in Blue City, Country I, a storm was already brewing far away.
At that very moment, in the sleepless shadows of Haliçis, Country T, Dylan was speeding through the rain-slicked streets, his jaw clenched, heart racing. It was well past midnight. The police sirens were a distant echo behind him—he had outrun them, driven by only one thought:
Find Ember.
Tires screeched as he pulled up to the building where he kept an apartment—a place that once held warmth, now shrouded in dread. He rushed up the stairs, barely able to keep his breath steady. The moment he flung the door open, his voice cracked the silence.
"Ember?" he called, his voice trembling with urgency.
No answer.
Dylan tore through the apartment, checking every corner, every room, his voice growing more desperate each time he called her name.
"Ember, please..."
But she was nowhere. Gone—vanished without a trace.
He yanked out his phone, pulling up the tracker. The arrow still blinked—right there. She should be here.
Confusion twisted into panic. He turned in a slow circle, staring at the empty space around him as the truth settled like ice in his veins. She wasn't here. The app said otherwise, but something was wrong—very wrong.
His legs buckled beneath him.
He sank to the floor of the room they once shared—the room where Ember had laughed, whispered promises, fallen asleep in his arms. He remembered the way she had looked at him under the soft glow of the fairy lights they had strung up together. The way her fingers had brushed his cheek. The way she had said, "Promise me you'll always find me."
Now she was gone.
His hands trembled as he clutched the edge of the bed, the weight of helplessness crashing over him.
"Ember!" he shouted, his voice raw, desperate, breaking. "Where are you?! Please... come back to me..."
Tears blurred his vision as his chest heaved with silent sobs, his heart shattering in the deafening quiet.
But then—something in him shifted. The pain didn't fade, but it forged something else.
Resolve.
He wiped his face roughly, stood, and grabbed his phone with a clenched fist. His voice was sharp, determined when he called the police.
"Sir—Ember's not here. You need to focus on the suspicious car we found in the parking lot earlier. I'll meet you at the station soon."
His tone left no room for argument.
Dylan wasn't just going to wait.
He was going to find her.
Even if he had to tear the world apart.
Dylan stared at his phone, the blinking arrow still fixed on the building. A sudden realization struck him—this place had two apartments. What if she's downstairs? His heart skipped a beat.
Without wasting another second, he bolted down the staircase, his footsteps loud and urgent in the quiet hall. As he reached the lower apartment, he spotted someone at the door—Adrein. He had just arrived and was hesitating, fingers hovering near the keypad.
"Is this your apartment?" Dylan demanded, voice sharp with suspicion.
Adrein turned slowly, clearly startled. "I... I just found out tonight that I have an apartment here," he replied, his voice uneven, almost too casual.
Dylan's eyes narrowed. "Then what are you waiting for? Open the door."
Adrein hesitated again, then muttered, "I'm doing it."
Something about him didn't sit right. Dylan's instincts were screaming.
Adrein looked at him with guarded eyes. "Did you find any clue where Ember is?"
Dylan stepped closer, not breaking eye contact. "I think she's in there."
Adrein blinked, startled. "What are you talking about?"
"If she's not, then just open the damn door and let me check." Dylan's voice was like steel, protective, desperate. He placed himself squarely in front of the entrance, blocking it.
Adrein frowned. "You think I'm suspicious."
Dylan didn't flinch. "You've always had feelings for her. So yeah, it kind of makes sense. Maybe you didn't like seeing us together. Maybe jealousy made you do something stupid. Right?"
Adrein's face darkened. "Dylan, you're crossing the line. Yes, I like Ember. But I'd never do anything to hurt her. Don't twist this into something it's not."
"Then prove it. If you're not hiding anything, just open the door."
Adrein looked away, the tension crackling between them. "I don't know the passcode," he finally said.
Dylan's eyes sharpened. "You said this was your apartment. Why the hell don't you know the code?"
Adrein sighed, a touch of panic creeping into his voice. "It's been too long since I came here... and I think someone else has been using it."
Dylan stepped forward until he was almost nose to nose with him. His voice dropped to a whisper—deadly and protective. "If she's in there, and something's happened to her... I swear, nothing will stop me from finding out who's behind it. So either help me open this door, or stay out of my way."
"Stop being stubborn," Dylan snapped, eyes blazing as he turned to Adrein. "The tracker I placed in Ember's ring—for her safety—is showing she's here. So open the damn door."
Adrein froze, shock flickering across his face. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
For Dylan, every second felt like sand slipping through his fingers. Ember could be hurt—or worse—and he wasn't about to waste another moment. Without waiting, he slammed his finger against the doorbell.
"What are you doing?" Adrein hissed.
Dylan didn't look at him. "You said you don't know the password. And if someone else is using this apartment now, then ringing the bell is the only way we're getting in."
He pressed it again. And again. And again.
Footsteps.
Dylan tensed, pulling Adrein into the shadows beside the door. The hallway dimmed as silence fell—until the knob turned.
The door creaked open, and a girl's voice called out softly, "Who's there?" She stepped into the light, looking around cautiously. She had curly blonde hair that cascaded around her shoulders, and eyes that shimmered with a familiar shade of emerald green.
Just as she began to close the door, Dylan moved.
In a swift, silent motion, he reached out and caught it. The girl gasped, startled, but Dylan pushed past her without giving her a second glance.
"Is your name Leora?" he asked, voice hard and direct.
She didn't answer.
But when Dylan finally turned to look at her, something clicked.
Her face. Her eyes.
Recognition slammed into him.
"Lai..." he whispered.
Just then , Adrein stepped inside. The air shifted between them as his gaze fell on the girl.
"Lai... what are you doing here?" he asked, stunned.
Dylan turned toward him sharply. "So, she is really Lai?"
Adrein nodded reluctantly, still staring at her. "Yeah... she is. I just found out today. She ran away from home and came here, said she was going on a vacation."
The tension was thick as Dylan looked between them. "She lied to everyone to come here. Why?"
The girl's expression faltered.
"Brother, what are you doing here?" Lai finally said, glancing nervously between the two men.
Adrein crossed his arms, his voice low and angry. "Just checking what my little sister is doing alone in the city without telling anyone."
Dylan, meanwhile, wasn't listening. His gaze was already scanning the apartment, each room, each shadow, searching—hoping—for Ember.
"I just wanted to leave the house because you never let me go out... so I ran away," Lai whispered, her voice barely audible as she moved behind Dylan, using him like a shield.
Dylan stood firm between her and Adrein, his body instinctively tense—guarding her, even now. He had always seen Lai as a younger sister, someone to protect, not blame. But deep inside, he knew... Lai was the reason his friendship with Adrein had crumbled, fractured beyond repair. A bond once unbreakable, now held together by a thread of unresolved hurt.
"How could you do that to your own sister?" Dylan said coldly, glaring at Adrein. "Locking her inside your house like some prisoner? That's not protection—that's control."
Lai, trembling slightly, reached out and wrapped her arms around Dylan's, her voice soft, frightened. "Brother Dylan… he always does this. Keeps me locked away like I'm something fragile. Like I don't exist outside those walls."
Adrein's jaw tightened. "You don't know the full story, Dylan. You never did. And why are you protecting her now, after everything? Did you forget what happened back then?"
Dylan's voice dropped to a quiet, dangerous tone. "No. I didn't forget the past, Adrein. But I never blamed her. She was a child. I blamed you—my best friend—for not trusting me. For believing your sister over me when you knew I would've died before hurting anyone."
Adrein's eyes flickered with pain. "Let's stop digging up the past," he said, voice tight. "This isn't about what happened years ago. This is about now."
He turned slowly to face Lai, his expression dark, unreadable.
"Tell me the truth, Lai Zhen... where is Ember?"
The room fell into heavy silence. Dylan's breath caught in his chest.
Lai froze.