Sometimes, she dreams.

In those dreams, she glimpses a world just out of reach—a place bathed in golden light. It feels tangible, achingly so… but it always slips away, dissolving before her grasp.

There is a girl in that world.

Sharp-eyed. Merry. Her hands are steady on a chisel, carving beauty from blank stone. From her touch, desires take shape, emerging from lifeless marble as if coaxed from slumber. Her laughter rings out, bright and crystalline, like the dawn’s first rays across an open sea.

~~I had a name, once.~~

When she dreams, she remembers.

She remembers the melody of a song, threading through her thoughts like seawater flowing over stone. She remembers paint-streaked marble, her hands transforming lifeless things into something beautiful, something hers.

And sometimes—when the dream is generous—she remembers you.

Faint impressions of your figure drift through her mind. A partner in the hunt, a steady hand intertwined with her own. The one who always stood beside her, even as the sea claimed everything else.

But dreams are cruel things. They slip away too soon.

The chisel strikes one final time, and a crack runs through the stone—and through her mind.

The girl’s face is swallowed under the tides. Madness floods in, surging like a stormy sea.

When she wakes, it’s not ---------- who opens her eyes.

It’s Specter.

---

The world Specter wakes to is wrong—too loud, too quiet, too bright, too dim. There is a ceaseless ringing in her ears, like distant waves against the shore.

She doesn't notice the bruises blooming across her hands, or the tang of salt clinging to her skin. The dream evaporates into nothing, like morning fog under the relentless sun.

What remains is worse: a hollow, gnawing void, where something vital should be.

But lately, there’s something new.

Every night, you visit her quarters—a face she swears she should know but can’t. Each time her eyes meet yours, the clamor of voices in her mind fall silent.

“Haha…! It’s you again…!”

~~I miss you.~~