That night, Ronan didn't sleep much.
Neither did the wolf.
"I don't like the taste of this thing," the wolf muttered around midnight. "It's like chewing on old static."
Ronan sat up in bed, staring at the ceiling. His room was quiet, dark, nothing weird—until he looked at his phone and saw a single new text:
Unknown Number:it's getting closer
He didn't answer.
Didn't even breathe for a second.
Calla had gotten the same kind of messages. Right before she started looking like a walking ghost.
He threw on a hoodie and walked.
He didn't head toward Calla's dorm. Not yet.
He went back to the place he swore he wouldn't.
The science building.
He didn't know what he expected—maybe to feel braver, smarter, stronger.
He didn't.
Just cold.
And watched.
"I can't see it," the wolf whispered. "But I can smell it."
"What?"
"It's not a spirit. Not fully. It's a leech. Something that clung to the edge of a ritual and got loose when it wasn't supposed to."
"A leech."
"A soul-drinker. The kind of thing that slips between cracks and feeds off people too stubborn to stay safe."
Ronan pushed open the rusted back door. This time, it creaked louder. The kind of sound that made you feel like you'd just woken something up.
He didn't go all the way in. Just stood in the hall.
Listened.
The silence stretched.
And then…
Drag.
A sound like skin against concrete.
"Not your fight," the wolf said. "Not yet. Get out."
He did.
He walked away fast, breath tight, heart hammering.
But he didn't go home.
He went to Calla.
Her dorm window was dark. Lights out. Everyone else probably asleep.
Except her.
She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, hoodie pulled tight around her, a half-finished sketch in her lap. Symbols. Circles. The thing she saw in the lab.
She looked up when he knocked once and let himself in.
"You ever think maybe we're cursed?" she asked without looking.
"No," he said. "But I'm starting to."
She leaned her head back against the wall. "I've been hearing things."
"What kind of things?"
"Footsteps in the ceiling. Whispers in the drain. I thought maybe it was just me. But…"
She turned the sketchpad toward him.
The symbol she'd drawn — the one from the lab — was now mirrored, duplicated. Once at the top of the page, once at the bottom.
But the bottom one hadn't been there before.
She hadn't drawn it.
"I didn't do that," she said, voice thin.
"Oh hell," said the wolf.
"She's marked."
"We've got three days, tops, before it starts feeding for real."