Never Meet

The Sound of Rain

The rain had returned to London like a promise she couldn't break.

It tapped against Drea's windows, soft and

rhythmic, as if echoing a memory she had

tried to bury. Six months since Rome. Four

since the exhibit closed. And still, she

woke to the faint scent of espresso and

stone, the sound of footsteps on

cobblestones that didn't exist outside her

mind. People said she looked better now. "You're glowing again' they'd tell her, as if healing

were that simple. But at night, when the

city fell quiet, she caught herself checking

work, not for

her messages -not for

friends, but for the ghost she still half

expected to find.

@VeritasNoctis was gone. Deleted.

Vanished. Yet sometimes, in her feed, in

the shadows of unrelated posts, she'd

glimpse something -a familiar chair,

blurred figure, a reflection in glass and

her pulse would stutter.

She told herself she was imagining it. But

imagination was how it had all begun.

And now, she wasn't sure if it had ever

ended. It happened on a Tuesday. Ordinary, gray, uneventful.

She was crossing the bridge near

Southbank when a man passed her - tall,

dark coat, phone in hand. The briefest

glance. A smirk.

Her breath caught.

The same smirk.

She froze, turning, but he was already

gone, swallowed by the crowd. The world

tilted for a moment. Her heart drummed

against her ribs, half panic, half

recognition.

By the time she reached the other side of the bridge, she had convinced herself it was a trick of light. A projection of

memory onto a stranger's face.

But that night, when she returned home,

she found something impossible.

A new i********: notification. No

username, no picture - just a message

from an untraceable account.

Three words:

"Do you still look?"

Her hands trembled as she stared at the

screen. The room felt suddenly smaller,

darker, as though someone were standing

just behind her shoulder.

She whispered his name - or rather, the

name she had given him - into the silence. "Veritas." The screen flickered once. Then went

black.