SPECTRAL.

† O N E †

     IF YOU'RE LISTENING TO ME NOW, I want you to know that what I'm about to tell you isn't just a story, it's my life. It's not a campfire tale, it's not one of those scripted television dramas you binge-watch until three in the morning. No, this is truth. Raw, brutal, complicated truth.

     People think they understand death. They think they've got it figured out, that death is simply when the body stops breathing, when the heart gives up, when the brain flatlines and the monitor lets out that endless drone. They think of it as a moment, a singular event, the final chapter, the black screen at the end of the movie. But that's not death.

     Death… is layered.

     Physically, sure—it's everything you've read in a science textbook. Organs shutting down, cells suffocating without oxygen, skin turning cold like marble. But there's a side of death no one ever teaches you about. A side that rattles your soul. A side that isn't seen but felt. Spiritually, death is not an ending—it's a transfer, a shift, a brutal tearing of fabric between worlds. It's not the shutting of a door but the ripping open of one you didn't even know existed.

     See, death doesn't arrive quietly like people hope it will. It shakes you awake. It peels back reality like a curtain, and what you see on the other side? It changes everything. Forever.

     I've learned that the world we live in, the one you and I wake up to every morning, with bills and coffee and traffic jams, isn't the only one. Behind it, beneath it, within it, are other layers. Strange, unnerving layers. Places where sound doesn't echo the same, where shadows don't belong to anything visible, where time stutters and bends like it's being held by someone else's hands.

     Most people never touch those layers. And honestly, they're lucky. Because once you do, once you've seen it, you don't ever get to go back to the world the same way again.

     I know all this because I've lived it. And the first time I brushed against that hidden fabric, I was only nine years old. But before I tell you about that night, you should understand me. Who I am. Why I see the things I see.

     Who I am?

     I'm Summer Reed, twenty-two now. For as long as I can remember, my life has been stitched together with threads of the strange, the unexplainable, the unwanted. I see things people don't. I hear whispers when no one's in the room. I walk into places that look ordinary to everyone else, and yet the walls hum with something older, something broken, something alive.

     And I wish I could tell you it made me special. That it made me chosen, or powerful, or anything out of the movies. But the truth? It made me an outcast.

     I wasn't like the other kids in school. I wasn't even like the other kids in preschool. People looked at me differently. Some avoided me altogether. Others… well, others decided I was the perfect target. I got laughed at. Mocked. Pushed down in hallways. Picked last for everything, even when I knew I was better at the game. And the reason? Because I wasn't like them. I couldn't be.

     They didn't know why I was different. But I did. It all traced back to one night. One single, terrible night. The night of the accident.

     You know, it hadn't always been this way. When I was younger—really young—I was just a kid. A lively, bubbly, full-of-sunlight kid. I laughed hard. I made up songs while brushing my teeth. I danced on tiptoes in the living room when my favorite cartoon theme played. My parents would clap and cheer like I was the star of some Broadway show.

     Back then, nothing about me screamed different. Nothing about me made anyone uncomfortable. I was just Summer. Just a little girl with scraped knees and wild ideas.