I was fifteen and already felt like I was living my third life. The first was ordinary enough—school, bad grades, parents who tried their best. The second was the one forced upon me: a sterile, suffocating existence under the care of my aunt, Eleanor, after the accident. And the third? That was the one I lived in between breaths, when the hum of the world twisted into a screaming chaos only I could hear.
Aunt Eleanor's apartment was pristine, expensive, and suffocatingly silent. She was a woman of rigid routines and sharp disapprovals. I existed to be neat, quiet, and invisible.
But today, something was different. It wasn't the usual static ringing or the low, gnawing anxiety following me like a shadow. It was a pure, silver chime, like a distant cathedral bell, growing louder and sharper.
"Lyra, are you listening?" Aunt Eleanor's crisp voice cut through the kitchen's artificial calm.
I flinched, dropping the textbook I was supposed to be studying. "Sorry, Aunt… my head…" I faltered, touching my temples.
Her sigh carried all the weight of someone performing martyrdom for an ungrateful child. "Focus, Lyra. If you fail this semester, I'll have no choice but to send you to your father's sister in the countryside. You know how inconvenient that would be for me."
The threat should have been hollow—but it worked. I muttered an apology and bent down to pick up the book. Then the chime exploded into deafening silver, and the world wavered.
A shadow—dark, impossibly cold, vaguely like a hawk with skeletal wings—slid across the polished kitchen floor and vanished up the wall. Its stench was ozone and rust, and my chest tightened with primal panic.
"Did you see that?" I whispered.
Aunt Eleanor froze. Her perfect smile faltered. "See what, Lyra? The ceiling fan? Dust? There is nothing here. Control yourself. You are not a child."
Of course she couldn't see it. No one ever did. Only I saw the corners of the world where shadows breathed, where whispers lingered. This one, though, felt like it was looking back.
I spent the evening huddled in my room. The silver chime was relentless, and I realized it wasn't just a sound anymore—I was a beacon. And something dark had noticed the light.