Aurora froze, her face showing that of pure terror, slowly, and painstakingly, she turned her head. The mirror. The full-length glass on the closet door. It's surface was actually rippling, disturbed like water after an impact. Yet, it reflected nothing of the room or her own figure. It was a perfect, absolute black. It was like a void that seemed to drink the dorm's already sparse light. And from the very heart of that darkness, a thick, tar-like liquid began to ooze, dripping steadily onto the floorboards.
Drip. Drip.
The moment the liquid touched the wood, it hissed, releasing thin wisps of sharp, acrid smoke that stung her nostrils with the smell of ozone and burning hair. Then, the shadow she had glimpsed earlier in the lecture hall, that tall, watching figure, began to rise from the blackness. It didn't step out; it unfolded, expanding from a flat shape into a terrible three-dimensional presence. It was faceless, just a shifting, static-filled gap where a head should have been, and its limbs were impossibly long, riddled with too many joints.
Aurora's mind shattered. This was not exhaustion, neither was it a prank. It was real. Behind her, the hallway door groaned, the wood finally splintering, but she couldn't break her gaze from the mirror.
The entity in the glass extended a hand, its fingers tapering into sharp, smoky points. It wasn't reaching for her neck. It was reaching for her wrist. And with the creature's movement, the jagged mark on her arm began to pulse.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
"No," Aurora managed to let out a low whisper.
She whirled around, fumbled desperately with the window latch, and shoved the pane upward. The cold autumn air was a biting, real shock, a stark contrast to the stagnant, awful chill inside the room. She was on the third floor. A jump would mean broken legs, perhaps death. But the fire escape was only five feet to her left.
The door behind her exploded inward with a deafening crash. Aurora refused to look, scrambled onto the sill, her boots slipping on the slick cold ground. She lunged, clawing at the exterior brick molding, her nails scraping uselessly on the rough stone.
For a terrifying second, she hung suspended over the concrete courtyard, she was depending on the gravity to weigh on her ankles. Then her hand slammed against the cold iron railing of the fire escape. The metal sliced into her palm, slick with dampness and rust.
She swung her body hard, slamming her ribs against the railing, and hauled herself over. She landed on the metal grate with a heavy, rattling thud that completely drove the air from her lungs.
She didn't pause. Scrambling down the fire escape, the metal stairs clanging like desperate gunshots in the quiet courtyard. She skipped the last three steps and dropped to the grass, her knees buckling under the impact.
She ran past the quiet fountain, past the brightly lit library where students calmly studied behind glass, entirely oblivious to the tear in reality that had just occurred three stories above them. The world looked painfully, utterly normal. A guy on a skateboard glided by with headphones. A couple sat on a bench, casually sharing a sandwich.
How could they not feel it? The air felt thick, charged, like the tense, silent moment before lightning strikes. Aurora burst through the automatic doors of the Student Union building, the rush of warm air and the familiar scent of coffee flooding her senses.
She collapsed into the nearest chair, a secluded booth near the vending machines, shaking uncontrollably. Her lungs were on fire. She seized her wrist and pulled back the sleeve of her hoodie to examine the mark.
It had changed again. The jagged lines had connected, no longer just a claw mark. They were weaving together, forming a distinct, complex geometric pattern that looked less like a map and more like an intricate cage. The skin around it was no longer bruised purple; it was gold. Faint, shimmering veins of gold were spreading from the black ink of the mark, traveling up her forearm toward her elbow.
"Whoa, are you okay?"
Aurora flinched, nearly knocking the salt shaker off the table.
Ben was standing there, holding a tray with a half-eaten bagel. His brows were furrowed with genuine worry. He was wearing a different shirt than he'd had in class, a band tee-shirt she recognized.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Ben said, setting his tray down slowly, as if approaching a scared, cornered animal. "Or… worse."
Aurora could only stare. Her heart pounded a frantic, irregular rhythm against her ribs. "Was it him? Was it really him?" she asked herself.
Her eyes locked onto his face straight for some minutes. His eyes were as warm as ever, and he smelled like cinnamon.
"I…" Aurora's voice cracked. She cleared her throat, fighting the tremors in her hands. "I think someone broke into my room."
It was a lie, barely a half-truth.
Ben's expression instantly tightened from concern into alarm. "What? Did you call campus security?"
"No," she breathed out. "I just ran."
Ben slid into the seat opposite her, leaning in close. "Aurora, you're shaking. Look at your hands."
He reached out, his intention to cover her trembling hand with his own. His skin was warm, solid, reassuringly human.
But as his fingers brushed the fabric of her hoodie, barely a millimeter from the skin of her wrist, a jolt of static electricity snapped between them. It was loud and visible,a sharp, blue spark that carried the faint, familiar smell of ozone.
Ben jerked his hand back, his eyes wide with shock. Aurora felt the mark on her wrist throb, a single, powerful beat. And for a fleeting, instantaneous fraction of a heartbeat, the lights in the Student Union flickered. The café chatter distorted, sounding like a slow, deep, guttural tape being played backward before snapping back to normal.
Ben wasn't looking at her face anymore. His gaze was fixed on a point just over her shoulder, his face utterly drained of color.
"Aurora," he whispered, his voice barely audible above the cafeteria's low roar. "Why is your shadow doing that?"
Aurora's muscles locked. She gripped the edge of the table, her fingernails digging deep into the laminate.
"Doing what, Ben?" she asked, her voice hollow and distant.
"It's…" He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. "It's standing up. You're sitting down, but your shadow… it's standing up."