She didn’t knock.
The girl with burn marks stepped into the kitchen like she belonged, her silence heavier than any scream.
Jakob was the first to see her.
He froze, tea mug half-raised, eyes narrowing. “You’re—”
She smiled, sharp and strange. “Late, aren’t you?”
Orla stepped into the hallway as the voice echoed. And time… halted.
The girl turned slowly. Her eyes were the same as the photo Orla kept hidden behind the mirror.
“Leah?”
The last time Orla saw her sister, she was choking on water and screaming without sound.
Now she stood in the hallway, calm, burned, and older.
So much older.
Orla’s breath left her in a single word: “How?”
Leah’s smile never touched her eyes. “You let me go.”
“No, no I—Clara said—she said you drowned.”
“She said a lot of things, didn’t she?”
Sta
