A Ghost's Obsession

The Hollow Days

Three weeks had passed since Alisha fled Blackwood Forest.

Three weeks of pretending. Three weeks of smiling at Jake, attending lectures, painting canvases that critics called "her most emotionally raw work yet." Three weeks of waking up every morning and telling herself: It wasn't real. It was a dream. A breakdown. A hallucination brought on by exhaustion and forest mould.

But her body remembered what her mind tried to forget.

She would catch herself in the mirror and see the faint bruises on her hips—shaped like fingers. Cold fingers. She would lie in bed at night and feel the ghost of his touch on her skin—his lips on her neck, his hands gripping her waist, his breath—cold and hungry—against her ear.

And worst of all? She missed him.

She hated herself for it. She loved Jake—sweet, safe, predictable Jake, who brought her tea when she was stressed and never asked too many questions. He was everything a girl should want. He was real. He was alive. He had a heartbeat.

But Kael had her soul.

---

Jake noticed something was wrong. Of course he did. He wasn't stupid.

"You've been distant," he said one evening, sitting across from her at their favourite café. His hand reached across the table to cover hers. "Alisha, talk to me. Was it the forest? Did something happen?"

She looked at his earnest brown eyes, his messy hair, his gentle smile—and felt a wave of guilt so crushing she almost drowned in it.

"I'm fine," she lied. "Just tired. Exams coming up."

He didn't believe her. She could see it in his face—the hurt, the confusion, the desperate need to understand. But he didn't push. He never pushed.

"Okay," he said softly, squeezing her hand. "I'm here. Whenever you're ready."

She nodded and forced a smile.

That night, she lay awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster like she used to do as a child. The flat was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that felt like waiting.

He hasn't come back, she thought. Maybe it's over. Maybe he finally let go.

She almost believed it.

And then the temperature dropped.

The cold came first—a bone-deep chill that made her breath mist in the darkness. Then the shadows in the corner of her room began to move, stretching, twisting, coalescing into a shape she knew too well.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Cloaked in black velvet that seemed to drink the light.

And those eyes—silver, luminous, burning with a hunger that made her stomach tighten and her heart race.

"You," she whispered, her voice trembling. "You came back."

Kael stepped forward, his translucent form solidifying with each step until he was as real as any man—more real, somehow, more present, more alive than anyone she'd ever known.

"Did you think I would not?" His voice was velvet and smoke, wrapping around her like a caress. "Did you think I could stay away?"

He reached the edge of her bed and knelt before her, his cold hands cupping her face with a tenderness that made her want to cry.

"You are in my blood, Alisha. In my bones. In the emptiness where my heart used to beat. I tried to let you go. I walked the forest for days, screaming into the void, begging the curse to take me instead. But it wouldn't. Because you are not just a woman I desire. You are the reason I exist."

She should have pushed him away. She should have screamed, called for help, done anything other than lean into his touch like a flower turning toward the sun.

But she didn't.

Instead, she reached up and touched his face—cold marble beneath her fingers—and felt something inside her shatter.

"Kael," she breathed. "What are you doing to me?"

He turned his head and pressed a kiss to her palm, his lips like winter frost.

"I am loving you," he said simply. "And I will never stop."

He told her everything that night.

About the witch who cursed him—a woman he'd scorned three centuries ago, her heart broken and her vengeance cruel. About the forest that trapped him, the trees that whispered his name, the endless nights of solitude that had driven him to the brink of madness. About the other souls who'd wandered into his woods over the years—lost hikers, curious teenagers, desperate lovers—and how he'd let them all go.

"Because none of them were you," he said, his silver eyes boring into hers. "I waited three hundred years for you, Alisha. And I would wait three hundred more."

She wept. For him. For herself. For the impossible tragedy of loving someone who was already dead.

"How can this work?" she asked, her voice cracking. "You're a ghost. I'm alive. I have a boyfriend. I have a future. You can't—we can't—"

"Shh." He pressed a cold finger to her lips. "Do not speak of can't. There is no such word in my vocabulary. I have broken the laws of life and death to reach you. Do you think a mere boyfriend or a so-called future will stop me?"

He pulled her into his arms, and she let him—let herself melt into his cold embrace, let herself forget the world outside, let herself believe, just for a moment, that love could conquer anything.

"Stay with me tonight," he whispered against her hair. "Just tonight. Let me hold you. Let me pretend I am alive."

She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks.

And when He laid her on the bed, stripped off all her clothes, and began sucking her breasts aggressively. She screamed in pain, but he paid no heed; lifting her legs, he thrust his c**k inside in one swift motion. Alisha screamed and wept, yet he didn't stop. Eventually, she began to enjoy it; she raised her legs higher and urged him to go harder.