Eira POV
The office is dead at midnight.
Eira stares at her computer screen and watches the cursor blink. That's all she's been doing for the past three hours. Stare. Type. Send. Nobody reads what she writes anyway. The data analyst position pays good money for work nobody wants to do at night. Which is perfect. Caring gets you noticed and noticed gets you hurt.
Maria walks past her desk without looking. Again. Her heels click against the floor like she owns the space. She always walks past the same way. Like there's nobody sitting there. Like the chair is empty.
Eira used to find it sad. Now she just finds it useful.
She hits send on her report and watches it disappear into Robert's inbox. Robert is the manager who forgets her name. Last month he asked her to do a presentation and called her Emily the whole time. She didn't correct him. What was the point. He'd forget again next month anyway.
The office building hums around her. Emergency lights flicker in the hallway. The air conditioning makes everything colder. Eira pulls her cardigan tighter and goes back to her spreadsheets.
Numbers are easy. Numbers don't forget your face. Numbers don't look right through you like you're made of glass. Numbers just exist and do what you tell them to do.
She's been working here for three years. Three years of showing up at midnight. Three years of doing work that matters to nobody. Three years of being the invisible girl that people forget the moment she leaves the room.
Her coworkers don't even know her first name. She's pretty sure Maria thinks her name is something with an E sound. Emma maybe. Erin. Definitely not Eira.
That's fine. Being invisible is safe. Being invisible means nobody bothers you. Nobody asks questions. Nobody tries to get close. Eira learned a long time ago that the safest life is a small life with no connections.
Her phone buzzes on the desk.
She expects a work email. Probably the data she submitted earlier getting rejected for some reason. Instead her stomach drops.
A message from her mother's old phone number.
The number her mom owned four years ago. Before she got sick. Before the hospital couldn't figure out what was wrong. Before she died and left Eira alone with a small inheritance and a locked journal she wasn't supposed to open.
Eira's hands shake.
She picks up the phone like it might bite her.
Opens the message.
It's empty. Just a timestamp. 11:47 PM.
Nothing else. No text. No emoji. No explanation. Just the fact that someone from her mother's number sent her a message with nothing inside it.
She checks the number three times. It's definitely her mom's old number. She still has it memorized. She'd memorized it the day her mother bought it back when they were still a normal family. Back when her mother was healthy and alive and not a ghost.
"Everything okay."
Eira jumps. Her phone clatters onto her desk.
It's Kevin from night shift security. He's young and nice in the way people are nice when they feel sorry for someone. He always checks on her. Asks if she needs anything. Pretends she's a real person and not just a ghost in the building.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a weird message," Eira says.
Kevin nods like he understands. He doesn't. How could he. Nobody understands what it's like to be invisible. What it's like to exist in the world but not really be part of it.
"Let me know if you need anything," he says and leaves.
Eira picks up her phone again. The message is still there. Still impossible.
She types back: Who is this?
The message goes through but there's no response. She waits five minutes. Then ten. Then twenty. The screen stays dark. No response. No explanation. Just that one empty message that shouldn't exist.
She looks at the clock. 1:13 AM. She should go home. She should sleep. She has work tomorrow night. Actually she has work every night. Her whole life is work and Netflix and books her mother left her and pretending everything is normal.
But she doesn't move.
Instead she scrolls back through her message history with her mom. Conversations from four years ago. Her mom saying goodnight. Her mom asking what she wanted for dinner. Her mom asking about her day even though Eira never had anything interesting to tell.
Her mom saying I love you. Over and over. I love you I love you I love you.
The last message is from July 13th. Four years and two weeks ago. Her mom wrote: When the right wolf finds you, give him this. He'll understand what I couldn't explain.
Eira has read that message a thousand times and it still makes no sense. Right wolf. Like a literal wolf. Like her mom was speaking in code or having some kind of breakdown before she died.
She'd asked her mom about it when she got the message. Her mom just smiled and said to keep it safe. That one day it would make sense.
That was three days before her mom went to the hospital. Two days before the doctors said they didn't know what was wrong. One week before she died.
Eira closes her phone and forces herself to focus on work. But her hands won't stop shaking. The mystery message sits in her inbox like a bomb waiting to explode.
By the time she leaves at 6 AM, she's exhausted.
She goes home to her small apartment. Unlocks the door. Makes coffee with mechanical movements. Everything feels wrong. The text message. The impossible words. The feeling that something in her life just shifted without warning.
She looks at the locked journal her mom left her. It's sitting on her shelf where it's been for four years. Brown leather. Old. Locked with a key Eira has never found.
She doesn't open it. Her mom said not to. Said it would all make sense when the right time came.
She makes toast she doesn't eat and coffee she doesn't drink. She stands at her window looking out at the city waking up. People going to work. People with families. People with friends. People who belong somewhere.
Eira has never belonged anywhere.
She lies down to sleep around 7 AM.
That's when the dreams come.
She's running through a dark forest. But her body feels wrong. Her limbs are too long. Her skin is burning. She's trying to reach something but can't. Trying to hide but can't. She's invisible and visible at the same time. Trapped between two worlds. Between human and something else.
Someone is chasing her through the forest. She can hear footsteps. Heavy footsteps. Getting closer. Getting faster.
She tries to scream but no sound comes out.
She wakes up gasping.
Her heart is pounding so hard she thinks it might break. Her sheets are soaked with sweat. The dream clings to her like a web. She can still feel the burning in her skin. Can still hear those footsteps chasing her.
She looks at the clock. 2:47 PM.
She's slept almost eight hours. She doesn't remember most of it. Just the running. Just the burning. Just the sense that something in the dark is hunting her.
She picks up her phone hoping for another message. Some kind of explanation.
Nothing.
Just silence.
But something has changed. Something in the air. Something in her.
And she has no idea why her mother's ghost is texting her at midnight.