Threads of Vengeance (Fnaf + Ghost! Reader Insert)

The Flickering Hours

It was like the building was folding in on itself.

She tested the boundaries. Reached for a door leading outside—and ended up staring at the backstage hallway again.

She tried to scream once, just to see if she still could. The sound echoed strangely, dulled and distant, like shouting underwater. A second later, it bounced back, distorted into a whisper that didn't match what she said.

Sometimes she would lie still on the stage, watching the First in their animatronic shells. They didn't speak to her. Didn't move when she passed. But she could feel them watching—curious, wary, waiting.

She left claw marks on a wall once. A small thing, just her name, carved in shaky strokes. The next day, it was gone. The paint was whole again, smooth and untouched.

But not everything reset.

A child's drawing she found curled behind a crate—a stick figure with wide blue eyes and another with an X for a mouth—remained no matter how many times the night cycled.

* * * *

She counted time by the shift in the building itself.

During the day, the pizzeria shimmered in unnatural stillness. Tables were upright. Balloons bobbed. Shadows moved through the building—shapes of the living. Most of them were blurred, indistinct, like flickering silhouettes on a fogged mirror. But the children were clearer. She could make out tiny faces, hear distant laughter, like a memory playing too far away.

The elderly, too, appeared more vivid than the others. One old man sat in the same booth every "day" she watched, staring ahead, never speaking. His expression was always blank. When Y/n approached him, he vanished like smoke.

At night the glamour peeled away. Tables flipped. Lights sparked and popped. Torn party hats littered the floor. The stage lights buzzed and bled shadows across the tiled floor. The First returned to motion—stiff, slow, their movements tinged with something ancient. Not hostile. Not friendly. Just aware.

* * * *

She tried touching things.

At first, nothing responded. Her fingers drifted through objects like smoke. But one night, when she reached for a toppled soda cup, it tipped—just slightly—before settling again. It left her chest hollow and aching, like the act had cost her something.

A few nights later, a single lightbulb burst above her as she passed underneath it, without her lifting a finger. It felt like progress.

Y/n sat against a cold wall once, trying to count how many "days" had passed.

Five? Fifteen? It all felt the same. The repetition made her skin itch.

She tried carving her name again—Y/N. Each night, she checked it. It faded slower this time. Took three nights before it vanished.

Some kind of resistance, maybe.

"Why do I even bother?" she whispered to no one.

But her voice didn't echo this time. It just... lingered, soft and low. Like the shadows were listening.

* * * *

Throughout Y/n's explorations, there was one room that made her feel different.
More solid. More grounded.

It wasn't the one she remembered dying in—that narrow space with exposed wires, dismembered animatronic limbs, and flickering overhead lights. That room still made her pulse with unease, even in death. The air there felt frayed, sharp, like unfinished business clinging to the walls. She avoided it more than she meant to.

The room she woke up in, though...
That room pulled her back again and again.

At first, she didn't think anything of it. It was filled with the usual clutter—cardboard boxes labeled in fading ink, plastic bins stuffed with party supplies, scattered toys, moldy streamers, and cracked decorations. Nothing about it screamed "important."

But every time she passed through it, her form felt heavier. Not in a burdensome way—more present. She left a colder trail in the air. Her fingers, when she pressed them against a dusty wall, left a smear. And when she stood still, she could feel a hum beneath the floor.

One night, driven by instinct more than thought, she sank through the floor tiles. Just a little. Enough to see.

There she was.
Still. Wrapped in a transparent body bag that clung too tightly to the shape of her limbs. Her hair was matted. Her clothes stained with dried, old blood. The plastic shimmered faintly, like the memory of light reflected on water.

She didn't scream. She didn't cry.
She just stared.

Everything made more sense then. Why she felt heavier here. Why her emotions bled into the air so easily in this room.

He had hidden her—tucked her away like another piece of trash beneath the floor. This was her grave.
No headstone. No ceremony.
Just plastic, dust, and silence.

The next night, she tried to touch the floor again. Her fingers slid over the tiles and caught—for the briefest moment—on the seam between them. It gave her chills.

And yet, some part of her clung to this space. Not out of pain. Not out of rage. But familiarity. A grounding. Here, she was real. Here, she was reminded of who she used to be. Never thought I would find a corpse relaxing, let alone my own.

When Y/n pressed her hand flat against the cool tile. For a moment, just a moment, she swore she felt something give. Not the tile—but the barrier itself.

The hum of the physical world was faint but constant in her ears, like she was standing on the other side of a thin wall with her palm against it.

Could she push through?

Could she be seen?

The thought made her chest tighten. She didn't know if it was fear or hope.

But the idea was there now, flickering quietly like the dim embers in her eyes. She remembered briefly that the Marionette brought her into the spirit realm, she didn't wake up in it.

She drew her hand back. Not yet. Y/n leaned against the wall, the tangibility of her form let her relax into a feeling of normalcy. She let herself relax in this space. However just as she began to drift, she felt a shift in the air. A dangerous, low burning anger seemed to pulse from afar. It stirred something inside her, something dark and twisted. Y/n's formed flickered and she made her way to the main room where the dangerous feeling stemmed from.