Threads of Vengeance (Fnaf + Ghost! Reader Insert)

The Flickering Hours

Y/n was beginning to understand that the world didn't work the way it used to.

The first night passed like a dream she couldn't wake up from—half-formed whispers, twitching shadows, the faint creak of servos behind the stage. She wandered through the dim remains of the pizzeria, moving without direction, her fingers brushing along chipped counters and rotting streamers that swayed even when there was no breeze.

The place looked... dead.

Ruined, really. Tables overturned, decorations stained and shredded. The tiles were dark with old rot, and mold crept like veins along the walls. The smell—if ghosts could still smell—was something dry and acrid, like rust and old grease.

But when the day came, it changed.

It wasn't sudden, more like a slow blink. The moment the pizzeria's lights brightened the trash vanished. The mold disappeared. The colors returned—still faded, but sharper. Tables righted themselves. The stage lights flickered on. The pizzeria didn't come back to life, not exactly—but it began to mimic it. Like a mask over a corpse.

And with it came the shadows.

Y/n watched from a corner booth as ghostly outlines moved through the space—people. Employees. Children. Parents. But not really them. These were just impressions. Faint, colorless figures that drifted through the pizzeria like actors playing the same scene on loop.

None of them noticed her. None of them ever did.

Sometimes she heard a laugh, a murmur, the echo of footsteps that didn't belong in a building so empty. But they faded quickly, like a memory she hadn't made.

She drifted, invisible.

At first, she hated it. The loneliness was loud. Every time she reached out—toward a person, a plate, a light—her fingers passed through, leaving only a whisper of her presence behind. She wasn't part of the world anymore. Just something that haunted its edges.

The First were no better.

They stayed near the stage, tethered to the animatronics like balloons caught on wires. Their gazes followed her. Sometimes they'd speak in low voices she couldn't quite hear. But they never moved far, and they never invited her closer.

They were trapped, even more than she was.

One night, she stood at the edge of the stage and watched them.

The Bear stood slumped at the front, the Bunny beside it twitching now and then like its joints didn't sit right. The Chicken and the Fox lingered near the curtains. And beneath the shadows, the First remained—just beneath the surface, just barely there.

They didn't speak to her, but they watched. Like they were waiting for something.

* * * *

Days—or maybe just hours—passed in a blur.

Time didn't tick here. There was no sun to rise or set, only the artificial flicker of the pizzeria's lights switching from their garish daytime hues to the cold, shadow-drenched tones of the night.

Y/n wandered.

At first, she stayed close to the main room, afraid to go too far from the Marionette or the tethered spirits of the First. But eventually, her curiosity pushed her outward. Her steps—silent, drifting, almost like floating—took her through the same looping hallways over and over. She'd pass the same torn party poster, the same overturned chair, the same dented vent cover. Sometimes she'd take a turn she didn't remember, only to find herself back where she started.