POV: Alex
The moon bled through the clouds like a slow wound, pale light carving silver lines into the edges of the courtyard where Mia stood, one hand wrapped tightly around mine, the other clenched so hard her knuckles had gone white. She wasn’t trembling, not visibly, but I knew her well enough to feel the storm she was holding back with nothing but bone and willpower.
“They always come back,” she said at last, voice raw and sanded down. “Even when we burn them to ash, they find a way to crawl out of it.”
Her eyes, lit by the torchlight and shadow, held no fear—just fatigue. The kind that builds when you've spent years outrunning ghosts only to find they've built homes in your spine.
I wanted to lie. I wanted to say this time would be different. But my silence was already the answer
