Chapter 1: A Flicker at Noon
It started with a flicker.
Clara Jensen was walking home from her shift at the university library when it happened—no more than a second, maybe less. A perfectly bright spring afternoon, the sun sharp and clear overhead, no clouds, no tricks of light. And yet, as she passed a lamppost near the student quad, she saw her shadow hesitate.
She didn't.
She took another step forward, but her shadow didn't follow. It lagged behind, then snapped forward to catch up—like a paper puppet tugged by an invisible hand.
Clara stopped walking. Her eyes darted to the concrete.
Her shadow looked… normal now.
Perfectly aligned. Stretched neatly behind her. No delay. No flicker.
She blamed it on lack of sleep.
It wasn't the first time the job had worn her thin. She'd been pulling late nights re-cataloging a backlog of rare books in the archives, some handwritten in languages she couldn't identify, others stained with age and mystery. Maybe she was just tired.
She kept walking.
But she started watching.
By the end of the week, Clara was sure something was wrong.
Not just a flicker anymore. Her shadow moved strangely—especially when no one else was around. Once, she walked past a parked car and caught the reflection in the darkened window. Her shadow's arm moved half a second behind hers, and its head tilted when she hadn't moved.
Another time, it disappeared altogether.
She was in her apartment, brushing her teeth. Light behind her. Shadow on the wall.
She glanced up.
Gone.
She turned. Nothing.
And then it was back, waiting for her like it had never left.
That night, she didn't sleep.
Clara told no one at first. Who could she tell?
Her roommate had moved out the month before. Harper, her closest friend, was already stretched thin with her own graduate thesis and barely returned texts. She didn't want to sound crazy. Hallucinating shadows wasn't something you could explain without ending up on some watchlist—or in a locked room.
So Clara did what she did best.
She researched.
She started in the library's folklore section. Books about omens, doppelgängers, witches, and "the second self." She found an entire shelf of dusty texts about shadow beings—mythological creatures that could slip from your feet and live lives of their own.
Most were old tales. Warnings.
But one passage stuck with her:
"To lose thy shadow is to lose thy anchor. Beware the separation. For what is cast away may wish to return—different."
She copied the page and tucked it into her coat pocket.
Just in case.
Things got worse the following Monday.
She was shelving books in the west wing—alone. The library was nearly empty. Rain pressed against the tall windows in rhythmic pulses. It was cold. Too cold.
She bent to pick up a book and felt… watched.
Not from behind.
From below.
She turned slowly.
Her shadow stood still. Perfectly still.
Then, as she stared at it—it smiled.
Not on her face. Only in the shadow. Lips curved, wide and dark, a feature that didn't belong to her at all.
She screamed.
No one came.
Harper found her sitting on the floor twenty minutes later.
"Jesus, Clara," Harper said, kneeling beside her. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Clara laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was worse.
They went back to Clara's apartment. Harper didn't press too much, just made tea and sat quietly while Clara spoke.
"It's my shadow," Clara said. "It's not mine anymore."
Harper didn't laugh.
Instead, she said, "Tell me everything."
Clara did.
The flickers. The lag. The smile. The old texts.
When she finished, Harper went very still.
"There's a name for that," Harper said. "It's not in science books. But I've seen it mentioned in older journals—esoteric stuff. A Severance."
Clara frowned. "What does that mean?"
Harper sipped her tea, hands trembling slightly. "It means your shadow's trying to break away."
"Break away?" Clara repeated. "How can a shadow break away?"
Harper met her eyes.
"Because it's not just a shadow."
That night, Clara kept the lights on.
She sat in bed, staring at the walls, afraid to move, afraid to blink. Her shadow curled at her feet, stretched across the floor, unusually still.
Until 3:12 AM.
Then it rose.
Not a lot. Just a ripple. A soft, almost imperceptible flutter like a curtain in a breeze.
And then it stepped away.
Clara gasped.
The shape peeled off the wall like black silk and began moving—slowly, carefully—across the room.
It stopped by her desk and turned to face her.
And smiled again.
To be continued…