The Morning After
550 Words
She woke to sunlight streaming through her curtains and the echo of a whisper in her ear:
"I will return, my little star. I will always return."
Alisha sat up, her heart pounding, her body aching in ways that felt too real to be a dream. She looked at her reflection in the mirror across the room—and froze.
Written on her skin, in faint silver letters that glowed like moonlight, were words that made her blood run cold:
"YOU ARE MINE. FOREVER."
She screamed.
Jake burst through the door moments later, his face pale with panic. "Alisha! What happened? Are you okay?"
She covered her body with the blanket, hiding the words, hiding the truth, hiding everything.
"Get out," she whispered. "Please. Just get out."
He looked at her with shattered eyes, but he obeyed. He always obeyed.
And when the door clicked shut behind him, Alisha looked at her reflection again—and saw Kael's silver eyes staring back at her from the glass.
"Did you really think I would let you go?" his voice echoed in her mind. "This is only the beginning, my love. Only the beginning."
The days that followed were a blur.
Alisha stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped painting. Her canvases remained blank, her brushes untouched, her studio gathering dust like a tomb. She drifted through lectures without hearing a word, spoke to friends without remembering a single sentence, smiled at Jake without feeling anything at all.
She was hollow. Empty. A shell of the girl she used to be.
And Kael was always there.
In the corner of her vision. In the reflection of every window. In the cold drafts that followed her through the flat, in the whispers that haunted her dreams, in the phantom touch that made her shiver at the most inconvenient moments.
He was everywhere. And she was losing her mind.
---
One night, she broke.
She stood in front of her mirror, tears streaming down her face, and screamed into the void:
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!"
The temperature plummeted. The lights flickered. And Kael materialized behind her, his silver eyes burning with a fire that was equal parts love and madness.
"I want everything," he said, his voice calm and terrible. "I want your body. Your soul. Your eternity. I want to possess you so completely that even death cannot separate us."
He stepped closer, his cold hands settling on her shoulders. His reflection appeared beside hers in the mirror—beautiful, tragic, terrifying.
"But more than that," he continued, his voice softening, "I want you to choose me. Freely. Willingly. Not because I haunt you—but because you love me."
Alisha sobbed, her body shaking.
"I don't know if I love you," she choked out. "I don't know anything anymore. You've destroyed my life. You've destroyed my mind. You've destroyed everything I was."
Kael turned her around and cupped her face, his cold thumbs brushing away her tears.
"Then let me rebuild you," he whispered. "Let me show you what we could be. Not a ghost and a girl—but two souls bound by something stronger than death. Something eternal. Something real."
He pressed his forehead to hers, and for the first time, she felt something other than fear.
She felt peace.
- Writer
