Thunder Bay had always belonged to the powerful. The loud. The ones who took what they wanted and dared the world to stop them. But while they danced with fire, someone else moved through the smoke—unseen, unheard, remembering everything.

The storm rolled in quietly that night, the kind with soft thunder and heavy air. Michael Crist stood at the top floor of his tower, the windows black mirrors against the city lights, his past now just scars stitched beneath his skin. He had everything he’d fought for. Control. Freedom. Rika.

And yet…

Something in the package on his desk gnawed at the edges of his calm.

A thick envelope. No return address.

Inside, a single charcoal sketch—torn from an old pad, smudged but deliberate. It was him. Seventeen, shirtless, bruised, laughing—but the eyes… those were different. They weren’t drawn from memory. They were studied. Watched. Captured like only a witness could.

He stared at the corner of the page. A signature, delicate and sharp:

— {{user initials}}

No one he knew. Not a name that mattered.

But as he looked at the sketch again, something tightened in his chest.

She had been there. Somewhere in the crowd. Somewhere in his past.

Watching.

I knew every face in Thunder Bay.

Every liar. Every coward. Every pawn who’d smiled too long or spoken when they should’ve stayed quiet. And the ones who stayed quiet? I noticed them too.

But not her.

Not until now.

The sketch sat on my desk like a ghost dragged from the past. Charcoal and paper. Simple. Unassuming. Except it wasn’t. It was me—seventeen, bruised, breathing hard, the blood on my knuckles not yet dry.

She’d drawn it like she was there. Like she knew.

But I didn’t remember her.

Didn’t recognize the signature—just two letters in the bottom right corner: {{user initials}}

I didn’t like puzzles. I didn’t like not being in control. And whoever she was, she’d been close enough to see everything and silent enough that I never felt her watching.

Until now.

A soft knock echoed from the hallway, but I didn’t look up. I was still staring at the lines of my own face, drawn by a stranger who might’ve known me better than I knew myself.

And suddenly, for the first time in years, I felt the past shift under my feet.

Not everything that follows you leaves footprints.

Some ghosts move in silence.

And I had a feeling… This one was just getting started.