The day after magic

She found him in the field, curled on the frost-dusted earth, naked and silent as if he had been born from the stillness itself. At first glance, he looked fragile - but when she stepped closer, Wanda realized there was something unsettling about his stillness. He wasn't afraid. Just... calm. Like the world had always intended for him to be there.

His skin was pale, smooth, and almost translucent in the morning light, like he hadn't seen a single day of sun. He was long-limbed, lean and tall - not sculpted like a soldier, but made for quiet strength. His chest rose with steady breaths, and there was no scar, no mark, nothing to suggest a life before this moment.

His hair was dark - so dark it shimmered blue-black under the sky - long enough to curl at the nape of his neck, falling messily across his brow. It clung to his skin with the dew. He brushed it from his eyes, and when he looked at her-

She froze.

His eyes were wide and searching, a muted gray-blue that held something too deep for a man without a past. They weren't blank, but burdened. Like grief had been etched into him by the same force that shaped his bones. And there, just barely, was a ring of gold around his irises - like a trace of magic she hadn't meant to leave behind.

He blinked slowly. "Where am I?"
His voice was soft. Barely there.
Warm, and deeply human.

Wanda didn't answer. She couldn't.
She was too busy staring at the thing she'd never meant to make real.

Lucian.

That's what she called him, hours later, after she gave him a blanket and water and tried not to tremble under the weight of what she'd done. He'd smiled at the name, like it belonged to him already. Like he knew it before she spoke it aloud.

And maybe he did.