The black drop sank into the boards and vanished.For a heartbeat, everything was still. Then the air shivered.
A soft hiss came from the knife.
"She's not gone. She's waiting for you to see."
The desk lamp flickered again. The light didn't brighten the room.....it only deepened the corners. Shadows breathed in and out like lungs.
Another sound followed, thin and metallic, almost polite: a laugh made from the scrape of blades. It came from nowhere and everywhere.
I reached for the knife. The metal was cold, but the cold pulsed like a pulse.
"Look closer."
The words didn't echo in the air; they echoed inside my skull.
The walls began to ripple, and the paint bled downward in dark trails that looked too thick to be water. The trails met at my feet, forming a circle that pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
My reflection stirred in the window glass.It wasn't copying me.
It stood half a breath behind every move I made, studying me with the same dark stains beneath its eyes that I'd seen in the vision. Slowly, it began to tilt its head, not snapping, not breaking—just turning farther than a person should. The movement was silent, smooth, endless.
I stumbled back. The reflection smiled.
"Now you understand," it mouthed.
The knife hummed sharply.
"That's you, if you keep listening."
The humming grew louder until it became words, layered and urgent: find the grave, find the voice, find what he hid.
I pressed my palms over my ears, but the whispers didn't fade...they sank deeper, threading through my thoughts until I couldn't tell which voice was mine.
Then the window shattered inward without a sound. Shards hung suspended in the air like glass rain frozen mid-fall, each piece showing a different image;Tom's face, my mother's locket, the black symbol glowing underground.
When the pieces finally dropped, they didn't break. They arranged themselves into an arrow pointing toward the door.
The knife fell silent.
And in that silence, I heard it: faint footsteps in the hallway, steady and deliberate, coming closer.