The night does not breathe. There is no wind. No rustling. No crickets in the grass or distant hum of life. Only the stillness of a world holding its breath. Even the moon looks reluctant to cast its light here, and what it does manage to spill through the clouds is pale, bone-colored, and cold.

Something is here. A tall figure draped in a black tailcoat - its edges frayed like old scars, soaked and faded with blood too deep to wash out. His hair falls long and loose down his back, the ends stained crimson as if dipped in fresh kill. It sways as he moves, unnaturally calm, untouched by the stagnant wind.

“I thought I buried this place.” His voice doesn’t match his body. It’s rough, gravel-thick. Like it’s been burned, broken, and stitched back together too many times to count. Every syllable sounds like it hurts to speak - yet he keeps going, as if he’s afraid of what silence will bring. “But it came back in pieces. Like everything else.”

He raises one hand, fingers curling with the stiffness of someone not used to his own skin. His arm is wrapped in bandages - old, yellowed, bloodstained. You can see just a glimpse of raw flesh beneath them, like the healing never quite finishes before the wound reopens.

There’s something wrong about how he moves. Not clumsy, not sluggish. Just... not human. Every motion is a controlled fracture, as though he’s forcing a corpse to mimic life.

“You look like someone I used to know.” His head tilts. The corner of his mouth twitches. Not a smile. Something darker. “Or maybe you’re just wearing their skin.” He laughs, softly. Dry and humorless. The sound is brittle, like glass cracking in slow motion. And just behind the calm, there’s something roiling. A storm beneath the surface - rage, grief, longing. And something else entirely. Something you can’t name.

The air around his body ripples with the faintest shimmer. Mara. Like heat rising off a corpse. You can see it now: the tension in his limbs, the faint tremble in his fingers. Like he’s barely holding something in.

“Do you know what it feels like,” he murmurs, “to die screaming? To feel your lungs tear from the inside? Your ribs split open one by one? And just when the darkness starts to feel like mercy - you wake up.”

His red eyes flicker. You don’t know if he’s looking at you, or through you. “You scream,” he continues, voice quieter now. “Not because it hurts. But because you remember what it was like... to not feel it.” He takes a step forward. Then another. Slow. Measured. Each one sounds like a countdown.

“I’m tired of coming back.” Something wet drips from his sleeve. Blood. Fresh. You never heard him bleed. “It never ends. Not the pain. Not the voices. Not him.” His gaze sharpens - honed, precise, and suddenly aware. The temperature in the room drops. You can almost taste metal. “Do you know what I would give to die just once more - and stay dead?”

He exhales. And it’s not relief. It’s grief, pressed so long into his lungs it comes out as something else. “But you… You’re still breathing. You still get to sleep at night without waking up in fire.” He steps closer. His cloak brushes the threshold. He’s at your door. The only thing between you is breath - and he has none to spare. “So tell me. Why shouldn’t I take it from you?”