Chapter 4- A Brief Moment of Forever

Two weeks before the eclipse

The textbook lay open, unread, between them.

Jordan’s room was a small constellation of chaos — scattered worksheets, highlighters left uncapped, and the faint hum of her ceiling fan cutting through the lazy silence. 

Outside, Cape Town’s skies were bruised with dusk. Light spilled in gold streaks across her walls.

Richard stretched out beside her on the bed, one arm beneath his head, the other curled around her waist. 

She fit against him easily — too easily, he sometimes thought. 

Like her back had always known the shape of his chest. 

Almost as if time had made space for this very moment- before they ever got here.

They had been studying for the last two hours. Now, they were just lying there, watching clouds drift, the weight of final exam fever forgotten.

Jordan turned her head slightly, just enough to speak without breaking the hush.

“Do you ever think about the world?”

Richard blinked slowly. 

“All the time.”

“I mean really think about it. How it all works. What any of it even means.”

He let the question settle. 

Then, with his usual dryness:

“I think it’s all kind of a joke, honestly.”

Jordan gave a quiet laugh, but her eyes didn’t leave the window. 

“You’re not gonna give me the ‘life is beautiful’ speech are you?”

“Nah,” Richard said. 

“We’re born, we struggle, and then we die. Whether you’re a spiritual freak, normal, or just two teenagers trying to understand the world... in the end, it doesn’t matter. None of us get to keep anything.”

She rolled onto her back, shoulder pressing against his. 

“That’s kind of bleak.”

“It’s true though .”

Jordan turned to face him again, lips parted like a question left hanging. 

“But doesn’t that make this—us—matter more?”

Richard didn’t answer. 

He leaned in and kissed her instead.

Their mouths met slowly, reverently. 

A kiss that felt less like desire and more like belief. 

Her hand slid under his shirt; his fingers grazed the curve of her neck, the edge of something unknown and unexplored.

Outside, the bruised sky flickered. 

Like the sun itself was struggling against a shadow.

The moment pulled them under — a gravity both terrifying and tender. 

The same kind that tugged at the heavens, sun and moon inching closer, destined to converge.

For a second, the air shimmered around them. 

The winds shifted, whispering of a world already bending beneath what they had awakened.

Geneva — AZO HQ, 19:00

An alert rippled through the command center.

Across multiple monitors, a spike in spiritual essence burst to life — unnatural. 

Pulsing like a star about to collapse.

“Cape Town?” 

Miloslav narrowed his eyes at the holographic map blinking in front of him.

“We believe so, sir,” one of the analysts replied. 

“High-level readings. Showing abnormal activity, it’s like there’s two zodiacs in one place.”

“Impossible. There shouldn't be more than one per continent. Unless...”

He didn’t finish the thought.

Around him, the 10 began gathering — some still in uniform, others pulled from sleep.

Maya looked half-awake, hair tied in a lopsided bun. 

“You think it's another phantom attack?”

“No,” said Matthew, coldly. “It’s something else.”

Miloslav’s voice cut through the chatter.

 “We leave for Cape Town immediately.  This kind of surge... it hasn’t happened since 1999. Prepare yourselves. Whatever’s down there — it’s not random.”

Cape Town — Jordan’s Room, 21:00

The night was still. 

The world, temporarily quiet.

Jordan lay curled against Richard, breath steady, heartbeat slow.

Richard, eyes wide open, stared at the ceiling as if trying to hold onto the shape of the moment before it slipped away. 

His fingers brushed her bare shoulder, delicate as a memory he didn’t want to wake from.

Neither of them knew what they had just awakened.

Not the consequence.

Not the prophecy.

Not the eyes watching from the shadows of stars.

For now, they were just two young people.

Bodies tangled. 

Souls naïvely intertwined.

Still untouched by the truth that the world was already changing — because of them.

Amazon Jungle, Brazil

Half a world away, somewhere in the rural heart of Brazil, where the moonlight never quite touches the soil...

The jungle was quiet. 

Too quiet for a village that once housed over four hundred people.

Smoke curled up from burnt-out huts.

 Ash floated through the air like lazy snow. 

Chickens clucked mindlessly between mangled corpses and shattered pottery.

Two figures sat amid the massacre.

“You’re adapting well,” said Megumi, the samurai, her tone calm—almost bored.

 Her long, coal-black hair was tied back, streaked with blood. 

Her kimono was torn at the hem, her blade resting quietly on her shoulder.

The rookie stared at the sky. “Didn’t think killing would be this... mechanical.”

“It is,” Megumi said. “You just haven’t bled for it yet.”

The rookie glanced down at his hands.

 “As long as I get paid, I don’t care.”

Megumi chuckled. “You will. One day.”

The wind shifted suddenly. 

The air vibrated—not loud, not obvious—but enough.

They both sat up at the same time.

“You feel that?” the rookie asked.

Megumi stood. “Yeah. That was a surge.”

“A monster?”

“No. This is different,”

 Her eyes narrowed. “Like something been awakened.”

The rookie rose to his feet, brushing dust from his jeans. 

“Where?”

Megumi looked up. “South.”

“South?”

“It could be Cape Town.”

A silence passed between them. Only the crackle of embers remained.

“The eclipse,” Megumi muttered.

“...What about it?”

“Spiritual walls get thin during convergences. Things slip through.”

 “It’s like 1999 all over again.” Megumi thought to himself.

The rookie whistled. “Big payday?”

“More like the end of everything.”

Megumi picked up his katana, sheathed it in one fluid motion, and started walking.

“Let’s move,” he said, his voice cutting through the heat like a blade.

“Don’t we need permission?” the rookie asked, jogging after her.

“We’re Hunters.”

She didn’t look back.

“We don’t need such things.”