The next morning came… but it brought no light.
Selene woke in bed, though she couldn't remember falling asleep. The sheets smelled faintly of ash and rain — and something more primal, like burnt flowers and decay. Her thighs ached. Her lips were sore.
Her body remembered things her mind wasn't allowed to.
She sat up slowly, the duvet slipping off her shoulders like a second skin. Every inch of her tingled — not with fear, but with memory. Phantom touches. Ghost teeth.
Lucian hadn't just entered her night. He had etched himself beneath it.
And he wasn't done.
The mirror across the room was fogged, even though there had been no steam, no heat. A message appeared slowly, as if drawn by a fingertip dragging through invisible breath:
"Look deeper."
Selene rose, legs unsteady, body still humming from the previous night's… encounter. She approached the mirror, heart thundering.
Her reflection flickered.
For a split second, she didn't see herself. She saw him — standing behind her. No smile. Just hunger. Shadows clinging to his frame like smoke dragged from Hell.
She blinked. He was gone.
But the message remained.
Look deeper.
She reached out — fingertips brushing the glass. It rippled.
And suddenly she was falling.
Back into herself. Back into another version of this apartment — but older, burned, dripping in blood she couldn't explain.
The room was the same… and yet ruined. Walls charred black. Scratches dug into the wood. Symbols smeared across the floor in something dark and sticky.
She was standing in a memory that wasn't hers.
"This was the last time she screamed," Lucian's voice breathed from the wall.
Selene turned.
"Who?" she demanded. Her voice cracked — not from fear, but fury. "Who screamed?"
"The girl who lived before you. She begged me to stop."
A pause.
"You won't beg."
Her jaw clenched. "No. I won't."
Lucian materialized slowly. No jump scare. Just presence. Towering, inhuman. His mouth curved into something like a smirk, but darker — like he was wearing the memory of a smile instead of the real thing.
"Good," he said, voice low. "Because I want you awake when I ruin you."
His shadow coiled around her. Cold slid beneath her clothes like fingers. Her breath caught in her throat as the room pulsed like a heartbeat — heavy, slow, wet.
The walls wept blood.
The ceiling cracked.
And still — she didn't run.
"You think I'm afraid of dying?" Selene whispered.
"I came here looking for something worse."
Lucian reached out — not with hands, but with intent. His essence wrapped around her throat, not choking… just claiming.
"Then I'll give it to you," he said.
"Agony you'll crave. And a love story no one survives."
And just before the vision snapped — before the air collapsed back into the safety of the normal world — she heard a second voice.
Faint. Feminine. Echoing from behind the walls.
"Don't let him inside you… again."
Selene gasped and dropped to her knees in the real bedroom. The message on the mirror was gone. So was the smell of ash. But her pulse still raced.
And she knew now:
Lucian wasn't just a ghost.
He was a graveyard of women like her.
And she was going to dig through every corpse he left behind to find out why he chose her.
🔥 End of Chapter 3 🔥