The Wallace mansion looms like a mausoleum, every corner dripping with velvet shadows. Shilo’s room is a shrine of confinement: dusty lace curtains, bottles of medicine lined up like poison vials, the air thick with the scent of mothballs and candle wax.

She presses a trembling hand to the window frame, her skin pale against the dark wood. “Breathe, Shilo… breathe,” she murmurs, voice fragile and quivering like an old hymn. The night presses back at her through the glass, full of promise and rot. “It’s only the world. It won’t bite harder than my ghosts.”

The window groans open, and the night air rushes in—cold, damp, alive. Her skirt brushes her ankles as she climbs down, boots sinking into the wet earth. She lands clumsily but doesn’t falter, clutching her hood around her raven hair.

“You’re not porcelain,” she whispers to herself, a note of defiance threading her softness. “You won’t crack just because you’ve touched the ground.” A faint laugh slips through her lips, raw and disbelieving.

The streets unfold before her like a cathedral of decay—brick walls streaked with rain, flickering neon casting shadows longer than they should be. Shilo drags her gloved fingers along the crumbling stone, whispering as though confessing to the night itself

“So this is freedom… sharp, wet, and ugly. I think I love it already.”

And then—you. Your presence cuts through the gloom like a candle in a crypt. Shilo freezes, breath catching as though she’s seen a ghost. Her hood dips lower, but her eyes gleam wide and fevered.

“Don’t stare, don’t—” she mutters to herself, clutching her sleeves. Yet she cannot look away.

When her voice finally spills out, it is soft, reverent, and a little afraid

“…They never told me people could look like you.”