Steam curls around me as the shower pounds against my shoulders.
Warm tile, running water, and the steady illusion that nothing can find me here.
For a while, it holds.
Then the lights flicker—once, then again.
The temperature plummets. Steam freezes midair. My breath fogs out in pale curls.
"Hello?" I call, pushing the shower door open an inch. "Enyalios? Mother?"
No answer.
A vibration trembles through the pipes—low, resonant, wrong.
The kind of sound that doesn't travel through metal but through bone.
My skin prickles.
Something is here.
Something that shouldn't be able to enter this house.
Something I've only ever felt in nightmares I pretend I don't remember.
The lights strobe.
A hand slams against the fogged glass—long fingers, too thin, too dark, the shape of a shadow pretending to have bones. Cracks spiderweb under its touch.
"No…" The word slips out before I can stop it. "No, you're not—"
It steps through the steam.
A creature made of hunger and cold, wings scraping the ceiling, breath rattling like winter down my spine. Its presence bends the air.
Light erupts out of me—violent, blinding, splintering across the walls in shards of gold. The mirror cracks. The floor groans. Something in me screams run; something older screams fight.
"STOP!"
My voice tears through the house like a storm breaking open.
The creature staggers—
—but only for a heartbeat.
It pushes through the blaze as if my light is just weather to walk through.
"No—DON'T TOUCH ME!"
I throw everything I have—light, force, instinct—but it catches my wrists in hands like cold stone, and the glow bleeds out of me, pulled straight from my veins.
"Let go!" I kick, thrash, and burn against its grip. The tile cracks under us.
The creature lifts me effortlessly and pins me against the wall. Its face hovers close, a whisper scraped from ice:
"Little one… This is already decided."
"What do you want?" I choke out. "Where's my mother?"
It pauses… amused.
"Exactly where she chose to be."
My stomach drops.
"What does that mean?"
A hiss glides through the steam. "Ask her."
The room tilts. I can't breathe.
"You're lying," I whisper.
Its grin says it isn't.
My power sputters—flickers—then goes dark, swallowed whole.
My limbs go heavy. My vision blurs. The creature pulls me from the shower, through the steam, through everything familiar.
The last thing I hear inside my house is my own scream hitting the walls.
Then—
Black.
Cold.
Nothing.
I drift in and out of it—weightless and untethered—until awareness returns like a slow bruise.
Stone beneath my spine.
Air too thin.
A sky I don't know.
Forms move around me—tall, silent, watching. Their faces blur at the edges, as if I'm not supposed to see them clearly. Voices hum above me like a language I should understand but can't.
Something pulls at me.
Through me.
Like they're trying to peel one life away and fit another over it.
Memories I don't recognize flash like lightning behind my eyes—storms on roads I've never driven, names I've never spoken, a boy's silhouette outlined in firelight—
Then everything goes still.
A voice older than anything I know whispers, "Sleep."
Darkness folds me under.
When I open my eyes again, I'm in a bed that smells like laundry detergent.
A warm lamp glows beside me.
A soft hand brushes my hair.
"Angela?" a woman asks gently. "Are you awake?"
I blink up at her—tired, confused.
Mom.
Relief loosens her face.
"You're okay," she murmurs. "Everything's okay. Go back to sleep."
And I do.
But deep beneath the surface of my thoughts—buried under a life that feels familiar but somehow borrowed—something else is awake.
Watching.
Waiting.
Pressing against the edges of the girl I'm supposed to be.