The girl's grip was firm, her palm cool against my lips. I should have been terrified.
Instead, I couldn't breathe.
I remember too.
Two words. That's all it took to make my entire world tilt sideways.
Slowly, she pulled her hand away. My voice barely worked.
"…How?"
Her sharp eyes flicked past me, checking the alley. The footsteps had stopped. But I could still feel him watching. Waiting.
"We don't have time," she whispered. "We need to move."
I shook my head. "No. Not until you tell me—"
"Later." Her fingers tightened around my wrist. "Do you want to survive or not?"
I hesitated.
Survive. The word didn't feel real. Not when I was supposed to be dead. Not when she was supposed to be dead.
But I nodded anyway.
She pulled me deeper into the shadows, leading me through an opening in the alley wall. A hidden path. I had passed this street a thousand times, but I had never noticed this before. Like it didn't exist until now.
My stomach twisted. "Where are we going?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "To meet theothers."
I followed her into the narrow passage, my heart hammering. The space was barely wide enough for us to move side by side, the walls pressing in, damp and crumbling. I couldn't shake the feeling that the alley was swallowing us whole.
"Who are you?" I asked, my voice hushed.
She didn't slow down. "Call me Sable."
Sable. The name felt sharp, like something that could cut if I held it too tightly.
We turned a corner, and the path opened into a wider space—a hidden courtyard, dark and silent except for the whispering wind. The moonlight barely reached here, casting long, jagged shadows across the cracked stone floor.
And then I saw them.
Five figures stood waiting. Their faces were half-hidden in the dark, but I knew—I felt it—that they were like me. Like us.
They weren't supposed to exist.
A boy with silver hair stepped forward. His gaze locked onto mine, unreadable. Cold. Calculating.
"You're late," he said.
Sable crossed her arms. "You try dragging a half-dead ghost through the city and see how fast you move."
My stomach clenched. "Ghost?"
His eyes didn't leave mine. "That's what we are, aren't we?"
Silence. Heavy. Suffocating.
Then another voice, softer but no less intense, spoke from the shadows.
"She doesn't know the truth yet."
Sable exhaled sharply. "She knows enough."
"No," the silver-haired boy said. "She doesn't."
He took a slow step toward me.
"The Second Moon doesn't give second chances," he said. "It steals them."
My breath caught. "What do you mean?"
He tilted his head. "You're not alive, Eira. None of us are."
The world tilted beneath my feet.
No.
That couldn't be right.
I could feel my pulse. I could feel the weight of my breath. I was standing right here.
I was alive.
Wasn't I?
The wind howled through the courtyard, and in the silence that followed, I realized something.
None of them were breathing.
The wind howled as Eira ran. The streets were eerily empty, shadows stretching unnaturally under the glow of the Second Moon. Her breath came in sharp bursts, heart pounding against her ribs.
Then— footsteps. Not hers.
She spun around.
A figure stood at the far end of the street. Cloaked in darkness, unmoving. Watching.
"Who are you?" Eira's voice wavered.
The figure stepped forward, the moonlight casting sharp angles on his face. Familiar. Too familiar.
"I've been looking for you," he said. His voice was steady, controlled—but there was something underneath. Something urgent.
Eira took a step back. "I don't know you."
"Yes, you do."
Her stomach twisted. He wasn't lying. But how?
The stranger exhaled, tilting his head as if listening to something she couldn't hear. "They're coming."
Before she could speak, the streetlights flickered. The air turned heavy, humming with a force Eira could feel in her bones.
A low whisper curled around them.
"You can't run from us."
Eira's blood went cold.
She barely had time to react before the shadows moved.