Chapter 114: The Girl in the Water
Late Morning
They found her at the stream's edge.
Face-up. Pale. Still.
She couldn't have been older than sixteen. Her skin looked untouched by sun or storm — porcelain beneath the dappled light that filtered through the broken canopy. Her eyes were open, glazed, irises dulled into foggy glass. Lips parted just enough to catch the breath she no longer had. Her hair spilled into the water, black threads unraveling into the current like something spilled — ink, blood, memory.
There was no blood.
No bruises.
No broken limbs, no torn clothing.
No footprints in the soft earth.
Nothing but her.
So perfect she looked sculpted.
So wrong it made Aria's stomach twist.
She stepped closer, careful not to disturb the quiet. Her boots sank softly into the saturated soil, every movement slow, deliberate, like stepping into a graveyard. She knelt beside the girl, letting her eyes trace every unmoving detail — fingernails rimmed with clean crescents of white, lips pale with a faint blue hue, pupils unfocused and too wide. Still. And yet…
Selene lingered a few feet behind, hand tight around the hilt of her weapon. Her shadow stretched over the rocks, long and jagged. "Is she dead?" she asked. Her voice was steady, but her other hand flexed, fingers twitching against her thigh. Her gaze flicked between the girl and the trees, then to the water curling past them — slow, too slow.
Aria pressed two fingers gently against the girl's cheek. "She's warm," she said, more to herself than Selene.
Selene's voice sharpened. "Then why isn't she breathing?"
"I don't know." Aria's hand moved to hover above the girl's chest, almost afraid to touch her again. Something buzzed beneath the skin — like pressure building under glass. "She's not gone," Aria murmured. "She's… waiting."
Selene took a step closer, something tight coiling behind her ribs. "Waiting for what?"
Then — sudden.
Aria flinched.
Her hand recoiled like it had been burned.
And the girl sat up.
It wasn't the slow blink of someone waking. It was abrupt. Like a puppet lifted by invisible strings. Eyes wide. Still empty. Still not hers.
The girl's limbs twitched once, then stilled again — poised, unnatural. A breath that didn't belong pushed through her lips.
She spoke.
But the voice wasn't hers.
"She glows," the girl said, her tone flat, stripped of all humanity. Ancient. Cold. "And you tether her. You shouldn't have."
Aria's chest rose with a sharp inhale. "Who are you?" she whispered.
The girl didn't answer. She blinked once, then tilted her head.
And screamed.
The sound was not human.
It was jagged, guttural, made of something older than language. It tore through the forest, scattering birds, echoing down the streambed. The air vibrated with it, as if the scream moved through the bones of the earth itself.
The water surged.
The gentle stream snapped to life, thrashing in spirals as if possessed. Waves curled and collapsed in place — upstream, downstream, all at once. The current whipped around the girl's legs, steam erupting from its surface like breath from a burning throat.
Selene shouted Aria's name and lunged, grabbing her wrist just as the earth near the bank cracked beneath them. Heat pulsed from the water's core like a living furnace. Stones split. The mud hissed and boiled.
The girl rose to her feet.
Not trembling from fear or cold, but from something inside her — something alive and seething beneath borrowed flesh.
And then she smiled.
It was wrong.
Too slow. Too serene.
The shape of it didn't fit her face. It stretched too wide, too calm, like she was trying on someone else's skin.
"We're coming," she said.
Her voice echoed with finality.
Then her eyes rolled back.
And her body collapsed — limbs folding like wet paper. She hit the mud without resistance, her mouth still faintly curved into that unnatural smile.
The stream calmed instantly.
No ripples. No steam.
Only silence.
Selene didn't lower her weapon. She stepped forward cautiously, scanning the trees, the sky, the water — anything that might still be watching.
Aria crouched again, her hand shaking as she reached for the girl's wrist. She touched cold skin. No pulse. No breath. The warmth was gone — snuffed out like a flame under glass.
She stood slowly, brushing the mud from her palms, voice hollow. "She was borrowed."
Selene turned sharply. "By what?"
Aria didn't speak.
Not because she didn't have an answer.
But because she did.
Because naming it made it real.
The thing in the girl had known about her — about the way Aria had tied herself, willingly or not, to the glow that followed Selene like a haunting. It had spoken of it like prophecy. Or accusation.
They didn't speak for a while.
The forest around them held its breath.
A single leaf drifted into the stream, untouched by current, like the water was no longer capable of movement without permission.
Selene finally broke the silence. "We need to go."
Aria nodded, but her eyes stayed fixed on the girl's body. "She didn't struggle," she murmured. "Whoever she was before… I don't think she was here when it happened."
Selene followed her gaze, her voice barely above a whisper. "Then we bury her."
They moved in silence. Aria found a stretch of drier soil above the bank, beneath a trio of bent pine trees. Selene dug the grave with her knife and hands, dirt under her fingernails, blood in the creases of her palms. Aria wrapped the girl in her own coat. She didn't know why. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe mercy.
Maybe it was fear — of what might still be watching.
When the earth was filled and the last handful of soil pressed flat, they stood over the mound, not speaking. Selene rested her hand on Aria's back for a moment — brief, grounding.
Then they turned.
They walked in silence toward the winding path back to the apartment complex.
Selene glanced behind them once, and Aria didn't ask why.
Because she already knew.
Something about the girl hadn't gone.
Something had merely stepped through her.
Used her like a veil.
And though the scream was gone, though the water had calmed, the hum remained. Faint. Like a thread trailing behind them, tied not to the forest, but to whatever lived inside it now — whatever had always lived beneath.
"Do you think it knew us?" Aria asked, finally.
Selene's voice came low, clipped. "It knew you."
Aria's hand tightened at her side. "I felt it when she looked at me. Like I was being… mapped. Unraveled."
"She said we're coming."
Aria nodded slowly. "I don't think she meant her and someone else."
Selene's jaw flexed. "No," she said. "She meant them."
They reached the tree line near the far edge of the east clearing. The apartment was still a mile off, tucked into the crest of the bluff. Hidden. Temporary.
Selene stopped and turned to Aria, her face unreadable.
"We have to leave soon," she said.
Aria looked up at her, eyes tired. "I know."
"But not today."
A beat.
Aria's breath caught — just slightly.
"Not today," she repeated.
Selene turned back toward the path, her shoulders taut. She didn't say it aloud, but Aria felt it in the way she moved — felt the guilt, the fear, the grief coiled in every step.
Not today.
Because today they were still together.
And tomorrow was no longer a promise.
It was a warning.