Night didn't fall tonight.
It shut off—like someone pulled a switch.
Hale walked the basement with no flashlight, only instinct. His steps echoed against the cold floor, stirring dust that hadn't moved in years.
He passed the shelf with the broken clock. The corner with the red crate. All familiar.
But his feet stopped at something unfamiliar.
A small wooden box, tucked beneath a tarp that smelled like mildew and memory.
He crouched, pulled it free. The lock clicked open without resistance.
The moment the lid lifted—
Her scent.
Ivy.
Not perfume. Not shampoo. But that quiet, untraceable thing that always reminded him of early rain and unfinished sentences.
Inside: a photo.
He and Ivy stood in front of a building he didn't recognize. Ivy's head was tilted, smile half-formed. His arm was around her shoulder.
The image pulsed with impossible warmth.
He flipped it over.
A date was written on the back.
One year before they met.
His stomach clenched.
Just beneath the date—faint, almost erased—was a word:
Veil.
And below that, smaller still:
Archived by: ø
Hale's hands trembled.
He stared at the photo, then at the wall nearby. The one where he once carved that same word.
He rushed to it.
Pressed his palm to the cold stone.
Nothing.
No mark.
No word.
No scar.
It had been there.
He grabbed a screwdriver from the old workbench. Scraped it across the surface.
The metal caught on something hidden.
He scratched harder—
VEIL
The lights blinked. The air shifted.
Room 9.
He didn't see it, but he remembered it. Like a flash behind the eyes.
Dark.
Still.
And then a voice:
"It's not your time yet."
He spun.
Two Ivys stood at the basement door.
One blinked. The other didn't.
One smiled like she'd seen him before. The other stared like she was waiting for him to say something he hadn't said yet.
Then one was gone.
Hale looked back at the wall.
The word he tried to carve?
Gone.
Wiped clean.
Like it had never been.
But the photo remained.
And now, the scent had changed.