The vampire pressed his palm firmer against the lip of the sealed well.
A pulse answered him.
Faint.
Once.
Then again—like something sleeping… breathing beneath.
His breath held.
No. That's not breath.
The moss on the stone wrinkled under his fingers, brittle with time, yet strangely warm now—as if the rock remembered hands that didn't belong to villagers. Hands that whispered rituals into its depths.
His lips moved before thought could stop them.
A chant, ancient and half-forgotten, rose from his throat:
"Naereth dosh men'vahn... tol'kirel shein ha'ruun..."
("Bound below the silent coil... awaken not, oh sunless wound...")
The air stilled.
Then a sound—not from the world above.
Drip.
Drip.
Like liquid sliding from stone to earth… but not water. Something thicker.
He leaned forward, just enough to hear.
Drip.
Shuffle.
Whisper.
The whisper didn't enter his ears—it bypassed them.
Straight into his thoughts.
A woman's voice. No... a thing once shaped like a woman.
"You are late… they are already feeding..."
His head snapped back, his fangs bared. The well didn't move. Nothing came. But the words lingered, like cold breath against the skin.
His voice, rough and low, cracked the silence.
"Who are they?"
Only wind replied. Wind and the scent of rot—buried deep where earth should be clean.
He stood slowly, brushing dirt from his knees. His fingers trembled before he made them still again.
This wasn't Tilda.
This wasn't a spirit born of grief.
This was older.
This was intentional.
He turned from the well and walked back toward the village. His boots sank deeper in the soil than before.
Like the earth had softened.
Like it wanted him to stay.
But he would not.
As he passed a child playing alone with stones, the child looked up—and stared. Not at him.
Past him.
And smiled.
Elsewhere, in a body not yet whole, a ghost hunted more than shelter—it hunted meaning.
It had been days—she couldn't tell how many—since Tilda had escaped the vampire's house.
The wind passed through her now.
A chill she didn't feel when she was strong.
Once, she could slip between people like a shadow. Her voice became theirs. Their memories folded into her grief, their strength hers to wield.
But now?
Now she hovered near the edge of a crumbling barn, watching a lonely man stagger home drunk from the tavern. An easy vessel once. She could've slipped in, used him, fed from his hate.
But now, as she reached for him…
Her fingers passed through.
Not gently.
But as if slammed by something unseen.
Thrown back into the empty night.
She let out a low growl, and the wind scattered it like dust.
"No…" she whispered, her voice barely formed. "Why can't I enter him?"
Her form flickered—transparent. Weak. She could still shape herself. Still appear whole. Still wear the face that had once looked beautiful in the mirror.
But beneath that illusion, she was unraveling.
And she knew why.
Ever since the vampire touched her—ever since he tried to tear her from that girl—it had left something on her. Like a brand. Or a curse.
She'd felt it burn along her spine every time she neared another soul.
A whisper embedded in her essence.
"Enough."
The word pulsed, not from outside—but within.
Like a truth she had swallowed and could not spit out.
"He marked me," she hissed. "That bastard."
A gust of wind swept past. The barn door creaked.
She turned to the reflection in a broken shard of glass. Her eyes—still pale, still beautiful—but dim. Hollow.
"You think you stopped me?" she muttered to the nothing. "You think this curse will last?"
She tried again—this time a child passing by with her mother. Her form reached, stretched—but before she could connect—
Snap!
A jolt—sharp and searing—ripped through her core and flung her into the dirt.
"Her scream tore through the void—not for pain, but for the shame of power slipping through her like sand. A scream born from the truth that she was fading."
Lying there, unseen, unpossessed.
"I need power," she muttered through gritted teeth. "I need my revenge."
But something deep beneath her words quivered.
She was forgetting things.
Not just how to possess—but who she'd been.
What he had said still echoed in the silence.
"You're not human anymore. You're just a little ghost."
No. I was more than that.
I am still more than that.
She stood slowly, pulling her form together like someone forcing broken glass back into a mirror.
She would find a way.
If possession wouldn't work…
Perhaps there were other paths.
Other ghosts.
Other forgotten things.
The woods were silent by nightfall, save for the hush of leaves murmuring secrets above.
Tilda drifted between tree trunks, her figure translucent in the gloom.
Her once confident stride was now replaced by staggered motion, a flickering, half-formed waltz with the shadows.
She didn't know how far she had come. She only followed the thrum.
It pulsed beneath her now—low, rhythmic, like a drumbeat from beneath the ground.
Something old was calling.
Something broken… but not dead.
As she passed through the husk of trees and root-tangled soil, "The air thickened with scents time had buried—wet iron, splintered rot, and something older than grief."
She followed it down a hill veiled in moss, to a place where trees stopped growing. The clearing yawned like an open wound in the earth.
There, nestled under twisted stone and brittle vines, lay a door.
Not a man-made door. No hinges. No frame.
Just a slab of cracked black wood, buried upright into the ground like a headstone.
Symbols had been carved across it—deep, clumsy, and old.
They shimmered faintly, ancient language burned into the wood with intent so bitter, it reeked of betrayal.
Tilda hesitated.
Even in her desperate state, her soul recoiled from the thing.
Whatever lay beyond that wood had been sealed—not for protection, but for containment.
And yet… she pressed her hand against it.
She didn't push.
She simply touched.
Thrum-thrum-thrum.
The heartbeat answered.
And the door... breathed.
A whisper rushed past her ears, not from the wind, but from within the crack in the wood.
> "You've touched power, little ghost.
You've tasted control, and now you are dying without it."
Tilda backed away, instincts firing, but her hunger made her stay.
> "You seek to possess.
But what you need… is to become.
A vessel no more.
A soul reborn in ash."
"Who are you?" she whispered.
> "Not who. What.
I am the promise made in rage.
I am the broken bargain that bleeds."
The air around her thickened. The trees leaned in. She realized then: the forest wasn't just silent. It was listening.
> "Free me," the voice continued. "Break the seal.
And I will show you how to become untouchable."
Tilda's form flickered. Her rage stirred. That vampire had weakened her. Left her crawling like some lost shadow.
But this—this voice knew power. Knew the weight of being cast aside.
She knelt before the slab.
Her fingers traced the runes.
She did not understand the language, but her soul—what was left of it—felt it.
"Teach me," she said quietly. "Give me the strength. I will set you free."
> "Then bleed yourself across the seal.
"Not with blood—but the kind of truth you bury even from yourself."
"What truth?"
> "Speak your name.
Not what you were.
But what you have become."
Tilda hesitated. A cold ache bloomed in her chest.
She wanted to scream her name. To remember the girl she once was. But when she opened her mouth—
"I am Tilda the hollow," she breathed.
"I am Tilda the haunted."
She hesitated, her form flickering.
"I am Tilda… the left-behind."
The slab shook.
Cracks splintered along its center.
The runes glowed, searing bright, before dulling like dying embers.
The door didn't open.
But something inside stirred.
> "You are not ready. Not yet.
Come back when the fire has devoured your shame."
The voice faded. The slab grew still.
But the seed was planted.
And Tilda knew now—
The vampire wasn't the only one chasing shadows.
Something else had begun to wake.