I never trusted my own footage.
That probably sounds weird coming from a cameraman, but trust me—when you've stared through glass long enough, you learn one thing real quick: the lens always lies. It frames, it edits, it hides. And sometimes, it shows you things you wish it hadn't.
Like tonight.
Seraphine leaned back against the café's brick wall, her breathing uneven but steady. The café upstairs had gone eerily quiet after the chaos, as though the whole building itself had swallowed its fear and gone mute. Nyx prowled across the basement floor, claws clicking faintly against the old tiles, her tail puffed so wide she looked like a feather duster on edge.
And me? I had my busted camera cradled in my hands like it was some holy relic.
"Play it," Seraphine said at last.
Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled. Whether from exhaustion or nerves, I couldn't tell.
I hesitated, thumb hovering over the playback button. "You sure? This isn't exactly… bedtime story material."
Nyx hissed. "Press it. I smelled something else in that fight, human. I want to see if the machine caught what my eyes did."
Well, when your witch and her cat both tell you to push the cursed button, you don't argue. You just pray your sanity's got a good warranty.
The playback flickered alive.
---
At first, it was normal enough—if watching a giant hellspawn tear through a café can ever be called normal. The broken lens distorted some of the frames, bending light like water, but the footage still matched what I remembered. Chairs splintering, Seraphine chanting, Nyx clawing at shadows like a furry chainsaw.
Then, the camera did something cameras shouldn't do.
The angle shifted.
Not my angle. Not anywhere I could have possibly been standing. It was as if the lens had slipped free of my grip and drifted to the corner of the ceiling, watching from above.
"Wait…" I muttered. "That's—"
"I told you," Nyx cut me off, tail lashing. "Something else was there."
Onscreen, behind the rampaging monster, a figure stood.
Tall. Trench coat. Hat tilted just enough to cast the face in shadow.
Seraphine's knuckles whitened around her cup of cooling coffee.
"Is that… him?" I asked.
Her lips parted, then closed again. She didn't answer.
But the worst part?
The figure wasn't fighting. Wasn't running. Wasn't even breathing hard.
He was watching.
Watching us.
---
The tension grew unbearable, so I shut the footage off. The screen went black with a pop, and I finally exhaled.
"Well," I said, aiming for humor but hearing the crack in my own voice, "at least my broken lens gives us bonus features. Creepy voyeur DLC, anyone?"
Nyx ignored me, hopping onto the counter and demanding, "Food."
"Seriously?" I asked. "We just had a battle that nearly redecorated the café in red and black, and your first thought is kibble?"
She bared her teeth. "Fuel, human. Fuel to hunt what hunts us."
Seraphine sighed, setting aside her cup. "Give her the canned tuna, bottom shelf."
"Of course," I muttered. "Risk my life, film supernatural horrors, and my reward is… tuna duty."
Still, the act of opening the tin, the sound of the lid peeling back, the absurdity of feeding a supposedly fearsome demon-cat while my footage hinted at stalkers in trench coats—it all felt grounding. Slice-of-life therapy, I guess.
Seraphine stretched, brushing strands of hair back, her pale face dim in the flickering basement light. "You're shaking," she said softly.
"Yeah, well," I lifted the camera like a shield, "this thing is basically cursed glass and duct tape now. You try holding it and not shaking."
Her eyes softened, but she didn't smile.
---
Later, when I forced myself to hit playback again, we scrubbed the footage frame by frame.
There it was: the figure in the trench coat. Not once, but twice.
In one frame, he stood behind the monster. In another—two seconds later—he was leaning casually against the doorway, impossibly far from where he'd just been.
"Two?" I whispered.
"Or one," Seraphine murmured. "Split. Layered. Wrong."
Nyx growled low. "The stranger in the café was not alone. His shadow had weight."
The words hung heavy, like smoke in the room.
And then—because the universe clearly enjoys tormenting us—the lights flickered again.
---
We had tried to move on. Reheated coffee. Small talk. Pretending the air wasn't thick with dread.
"Do you ever put the camera down?" Seraphine asked suddenly.
"Do you ever stop throwing fireballs at nightmares?" I shot back.
For a second, she almost laughed. Almost.
Nyx, with a mouth full of tuna, mumbled, "You two flirt weird."
We both glared at her. She purred smugly.
It could have been a moment of normalcy, a breath after chaos. But of course, it didn't last.
The camera—left idle on the table—lit up on its own.
Playback began.
---
The footage onscreen wasn't from the battle.
It wasn't from upstairs.
It was… here.
The basement.
The three of us.
Only—empty.
Empty chairs. Empty table. Empty air.
Then, one by one, us-but-not-us walked into frame.
A shadow-Seraphine, pale as bone. A shadow-Nyx, her eyes glowing sickly green. And a shadow-me, camera in hand, face obscured as if someone had smeared ink over the lens.
I couldn't breathe.
The shadows moved differently, like marionettes pulled by an impatient puppeteer. Wrong timing. Wrong rhythm.
And then—
Shadow-Seraphine paused.
Turned.
And looked directly into the camera.
Our camera.
The real one.
Coffee slipped from Seraphine's hands and splattered on the floor.
Nyx's fur stood so high she looked electrocuted.
"…She saw us," the cat whispered.
The footage cut to black.
And the silence that followed was heavier than any roar of battle.
---
[ Live Chat]
[SpectralSoup]: Brooooo this is cinema-level suspense, I can't breathe 😭
[LensFlare420]: Is this scripted?? There's no way shadows look at the cam like that lmao
[MangoOnPizza]: Camera got DLC ghost vision after the lens broke 💀
[SleepDeprivedWitch]: MC better NOT film the afterlife next, I ain't ready 😨
[BudgetCaffeine]: Bruh if the cameraman dies we got no story. Someone pls wrap him in bubblewrap.
[ModNote]: Reminder: No spoilers beyond this chapter. Keep it civil.