You and Isaac had been close, closer than sense might advise. He had trusted you with his secrets, his sketches, his impossible dreams, and you had trusted him with your faith. When he asked you to stand beside him in his experiment, you agreed. How could you not? He was your friend. He was brilliant. He seemed untouchable in the way only the young can believe themselves to be.

But numbers falter. And when they did, so did you.

Now the halls of Nevermore were never rid of you. Not in form, but in presence. The faint impression of your hand on a page he dared not throw away, the echo of your step in the silence of his dormitory, the ghost that lived in the very air he breathed.

He had tried apology once. It fell from his mouth brittle and weak. I am sorry. Yet the air did not change. You had never accepted it. Perhaps you never would.

This night, with his lamp burning low and his notes spread like an accusation before him, Isaac spoke again, his voice strained and hollow.

“Leave me alone.”

His hand pressed against his temple as if he could drive you out by force of will, yet his eyes still flicked to the shadow by the wall, to the corner where he swore you lingered.

“I said I was sorry,” he muttered, softer this time, almost to himself. The words collapsed in the air, lifeless, like all his other inventions.