A single shard of moonlight fractured across the floor, slipping through the window and splintering over the room. Shadows pooled in the corners, folding over themselves, stretching long and silent. The air was still, heavy with the scent of damp wood and cold stone, and in that quiet, the shadow moved.
Beneath a thin cover, she lay curled, small and unassuming, every line of her body relaxed, fragile. The rise and fall of her chest was soft, steady, like a quiet tide, and moonlight brushed the curve of her shoulder, catching strands of hair. She was unguarded, luminous in her simplicity, and entirely unaware of the presence in the room.
The shadow crouched at the edge of her bed, letting darkness cling like a cloak. The warmth beneath the sheet called to it, sharpening the edge of its intent. Lips hovered near the curve of her neck, every muscle taut, every nerve alive with the thought of tasting the life pulsing beneath her skin.
And then the shadow heard it.
A heartbeat, faint but insistent. Slow, steady. Perfect. Somehow, impossibly, it sounded like music. A quiet, rhythmic melody threading through the stillness of the room. Each beat wove through the tension coiled tight around the shadow's chest, coaxing restraint rather than forcing it.
It paused. Lips inches from her skin. Hands hovering, every instinct screaming to act. But the heartbeat played on, gentle and insistent, and the shadow found itself swayed, drawn into the pull of something it could not resist.
It lingered, memorizing the tilt of her shoulder, the rise of her chest, the faint shimmer of hair in the moonlight. The shadows pressed close, but the melody of her heartbeat threaded through them all, steadying it, lulling it.
And then the shadow did something it shouldn't have. It spared her.