Chapter 1048: Attention Seeker?

Eros rode Nyxire into the city, and the city—

God bless its overpriced cocktails and inflated egos

—had absolutely no clue what the hell to do with him.

At first, he played nice. Kept to the side streets like some polite

mythological

inconvenience,

letting Nyxire ease into her stride, letting the rhythm settle—

hoof, asphalt, hoof, asphalt

—like a heartbeat the city had forgotten it still had.

There was something almost

therapeutic

about it, honestly.

The weight of him, the sheer

presence

of a

six-foot-something

demigod

draped over a creature that looked like it had stepped out of a Renaissance painting and decided modern civilization wasn’t shit... yeah, it synced.

It clicked.

Man and monster, or whatever the hell Nyxire counted as, moving like they owned the concept of motion itself.

But side streets are for people who want to be ignored.

Eros had never had that problem. And downtown? Downtown demanded witnesses.

So he went.

And oh, the eyes.

The first one hit like a cheap jump scare—some woman stepping out of a wine bar, already halfway into her phone like it owed her money. Then the sound reached her. That sharp, metallic rhythm—iron on asphalt, wrong in a way that punched through the noise of engines and conversations and late-night bullshit.

She looked up.

And

froze.

Her mouth dropped open like her brain had just blue-screened. Phone slipped straight out of her hand, bounced once, twice, screen probably dead as hell. She didn’t even blink.

Just stood there, staring like she’d accidentally subscribed to a reality she hadn’t paid for.

Eros didn’t slow and Nyxire didn’t care.

Second set—young couple, mid-walk, mid-conversation, probably arguing about something stupid like texts or exes or whatever relationship drama people recycled these days.

The girl grabbed her boyfriend’s arm hard enough to snap him out of whatever he was saying, and then they both looked.

And yeah...

that was it.

Conversation dead. Movement canceled and their braincells reassigned.

The guy would absolutely tell this story later. Swear up and down he saw God—or some Netflix adaptation of Him—riding a white horse down Wilshire at night. Nobody would believe him.

Honestly, Eros almost felt bad for the dude.

Almost.

Then came the third.

An entire patio. Late-night bistro energy—dim lights, overpriced wine, people pretending their lives made sense.

Conversations flowing, glasses halfway raised, that soft, curated hum of normalcy.

And then—

Silence.

Not gradual neither confused. Just... cut.

Like someone had muted the world.

Heads turned in unison. Glasses hovered mid-air. Candle flames flickered like even they were trying to figure out if this was real or some collective hallucination.

Because what walked past them wasn’t supposed to exist.

Nyxire moved like something ancient pretending to be modern. Massive, white, unreal—her coat catching the streetlights like polished marble, her mane flowing with a kind of lazy arrogance that said

yes, you’re looking, and no, I don’t give a damn.

She didn’t flinch at horns. Didn’t react to the inevitable

what the fuck is that

from some guy whose worldview had just been politely shattered.

She just... walked.

Like cities were temporary. Like humans were background noise.

And on her back—

Eros.

Relaxed. Straight-backed. Effortless in a way that couldn’t be faked if you tried for a hundred lifetimes.

The coat ARIA picked out moved like it had its own agenda, catching wind, shifting just enough to look cinematic without trying too hard. The linen shirt—yeah, that soft, expensive kind that screamed

I didn’t check the price tag and neither should you

—glowed under streetlights.

His hair? Messed up in that annoyingly perfect way that made people irrationally angry.

And his face...

Calm.

The kind of expression that said

I belong to myself, and the rest of y’all are optional.

Phones started coming out like a reflex. Of course they did. Humanity’s first instinct when faced with the divine or the insane was apparently

record it for later.

Women leaned out of car windows. Some dude in a rideshare straight up rolled his window down and stared like he’d forgotten how driving worked, his passenger practically climbing into the front seat to get a better angle.

Eros let it happen.

Then, because he could, he nudged Nyxire forward.

She responded instantly.

That shift—subtle, powerful—hindquarters tightening, muscles coiling, and then—

Acceleration.

Hooves

struck faster. Harder. The rhythm sharpened, turned into something alive, something that echoed off buildings and slid under skin.

Her mane snapped in the wind she created herself, her presence swelling until it felt like the street had to stretch just to accommodate her.

And the city reacted.

Whistles. Shouts. Someone screamed—half delight, half existential crisis. A voice cut through the noise:

who is that—

followed immediately by

I don’t know but holy shit—

Yeah. That felt about right.

Up ahead, a traffic light flipped red.

Eros slowed her with the smallest shift of weight, the kind of control that looked like nothing but meant everything. Nyxire obeyed like gravity itself had been rewritten for him, easing back into a walk without breaking that regal, untouchable rhythm.

In the crosswalk, a woman stopped.

Dead center. Mid-step. Hand rising to her mouth like she was trying to physically hold in whatever emotion was about to escape.

She looked up at him.

And for a second, the entire world narrowed to that single, fragile moment.

Eros inclined his head.

Just a little.

Polite. Controlled. A ghost of manners from a life that felt like it belonged to someone else—but still fit him well enough.

The sound she made wasn’t English.

Didn’t need to be.

The light turned green.

He moved.

Behind him, phones captured everything—angles, perspectives, shaky hands trying to hold onto something they didn’t understand.

Somewhere, in some sterile office filled with people who thought algorithms made them gods, a system started blinking red. Data spikes. Upload anomalies. A pattern forming out of nowhere.

A man.

A horse.

A presence.

ARIA would handle it. She always did. That scary, invisible kind of competence—the kind that didn’t ask for credit, didn’t leave fingerprints, didn’t even bother announcing itself—just reached out and quietly erased problems like they’d never had the audacity to exist in the first place.

By morning, every single video would be gone in the only way that mattered.

Not just deleted, but

unreal.

Corrupted files, failed uploads, accounts acting glitchy as hell for no good reason.

And the people who filmed them?

Yeah... they’d remember something. Sort of. But it would sit in their heads wrong—soft around the edges, hazy, like a dream that felt important until you tried to explain it and suddenly it sounded stupid even to you.

A white horse, a man, a feeling. Nothing solid. Nothing you could prove. Nothing anyone would take seriously without sounding a little unhinged.

He rode on... he had a beauty to meet.