SPECTRAL.

† T W E N T Y T W O †

     I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT WITHOUT SOUNDING INSANE, but aside the fact that I've come to understand that once you open a door to the dead, once you acknowledge them, they don't just slip quietly back into their shadows. They multiply. They wait. They watch.

     It began the very night I admitted to myself that the figure in the mirror wasn't just a trick of the light. That acknowledgment—silent but undeniable—was like a ripple in the air, and ever since, the world hasn't looked the same. Wherever I go now, I see them. They're not wandering aimlessly like spirits are often described in those shallow horror stories; they're stationed. They stand like soldiers of grief, unmoving, their hollow eyes locked onto me. Their stillness is what makes them unbearable. They never blink, never gesture, never attempt to reach for me. They only watch, as if waiting for a signal, a secret word, or some event that will finally pull me into their world.

     I tried ignoring them at first. I would lower my gaze, quicken my steps, pretend that they weren't there. But how does one ignore an audience of silence? Even if I didn't look, I could feel them. An almost physical heat in their stare, like sunlight through a magnifying glass pressed against my skin. Every corner I turned, every hallway I passed through, every path across campus, they were there, stationed like living gravestones. It became almost impossible not to notice.

     I told myself Bella would be the last of her kind I'd ever meet, the last human-demon who would disturb my reality. Bella had been enough to unravel my understanding of the world, and I wasn't looking to relive that experience. But life has its own cruel timing. I was wrong.

     It happened on a gray evening. I was walking back to the dormitory, the air damp with the scent of rain that hadn't yet fallen. The campus was unusually quiet, the kind of silence that makes you hear your own breathing. And then I saw them again, the ghosts. They lined the edges of the path, pale outlines against the trees, watching me with the same unbearable patience. Something in me broke that night. I couldn't avert my gaze any longer. Their awareness of me was absolute, and in that moment, to pretend ignorance felt childish. So I lifted my head and looked back at them.

     That was when I noticed a man.

     He had been watching me too, though not like the ghosts. His gaze was alive, deliberate, curious. He leaned against the iron railing near the dormitory entrance, dressed in a dark jacket that hung loosely around his frame. His face was sharp, not cruel but defined, like someone carved him from both stone and shadow. There was a faint scar just above his jawline, a line that seemed to catch the fading light in unsettling ways. His eyes, though—his eyes betrayed him. They were too knowing, too steady, the kind of eyes that didn't just look at you but through you.

     "Don't look so troubled," he said when I finally drew close enough. His voice was low, measured, a calm in the chaos. "They won't follow you."

     The words jolted me. My steps faltered, and I froze, staring at him with a mix of relief and suspicion. He had seen them too. That fact alone split my chest wide with conflicting emotions—fear, shock, and something dangerously close to gratitude.

     "You can see them?" I asked before I could stop myself.

     He tilted his head slightly, the corner of his mouth lifting in a half-smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Of course. They're hard to miss when you know what to look for."

     I stood there, stunned, the realization blooming inside me like wildfire. I wasn't alone. After all these years, after the isolation, the secret of my cursed sight, I had finally found someone who bore the same burden. My heart lifted with something I hadn't allowed myself to feel in a long time: hope.