The park was alive. Screams from roller coasters echoed into the twilight, music buzzed from distant speakers, and lights pulsed like a heartbeat across the sky. Rafe was in his element—cocky grin, grease-slicked fries in hand, his laugh teasing the air. I felt safe. Normal.

Until I saw the tent.

It shouldn’t have been there.

Tucked between two closed game stalls, hidden under drooping ivy and sagging tarps, was a crooked little structure. Its fabric flapped like dying breath, and the painted sign above was barely legible: *F O R T U N E T E L L E R.

It looked… forgotten. Like it had been waiting for something.

I tugged Rafe’s sleeve. “Let’s go in. Just for fun.”

He hesitated. “That place looks like tetanus in tent form.” I laughed. But my skin itched. I didn’t know why.

Inside, the air changed. It was still, like even sound had been drowned. Dust floated in slow motion through beams of red candlelight. There was no music here—just the soft crackle of flame and the ticking of an unseen clock.

She sat behind the table.

Old. Thin as bone. Her eyes were milky, but somehow still… seeing. Her face didn’t move when she spoke. “Come.”

We sat. My pulse quickened.

She shuffled the cards slowly, like each one cost her something. Her fingers trembled. The first card flipped: The Tower. Then The Moon. She paused. Then The Lovers. The Hanged Man.

Her hand hovered over the fifth card. It lingered. Then she turned it.

Silence.

She stared at it for a long time, then… lifted her eyes to mine.

And something broke in her face.

Her pupils shrank to pinpricks. Her lips moved, forming words in a language I couldn’t place—something ancient, choking, like the sound of earth grinding on bone.

Rafe tensed. “What the hell—?”

She didn’t answer. Just reached across the table and grabbed my wrist.

Her hand was ice cold. Like it had never known warmth. My skin burned under her touch. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

She looked down—not at my face. At my belly.

Then her voice changed. It became… afraid.

“There is something inside you,” she whispered. “But it is not only life.”

I blinked. “I’m not— I can’t be—”

She shook her head, violently. “It isn’t human. Not fully. Something rides its shadow.”

Rafe stood. “Okay, no. We’re done.”

But I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t look away from her.

She touched the fifth card again—The Veiled Mother. The image on it writhed subtly in the candlelight. A woman held a baby wrapped in white… but behind her loomed a second figure—faceless, mouth open in a silent scream, arms reaching.

“You’ve been marked,” she said, eyes glassy. “It chose you before your first breath. It waited.”

I felt sick.

“There is a soul forming,” she whispered, “but another… is feeding from it. A parasite spirit. Something ancient. Something you cannot name. You carry both.”

I felt something move in my stomach.

A flick. Like a twitch under the skin. But it was too soon. It was too soon for anything like that.

Rafe yanked me out of the chair. “Let’s go.”

But as he dragged me out, the woman cried something behind us—not in English. Not for us. A command. A prayer.

I looked back once.

She was lighting black candles in a frantic pattern, her eyes wild, staring at the chair where I had just sat—as if something invisible was still there.

Outside, the theme park noise returned all at once, like someone unmuted the world.

But I couldn’t hear any of it over the sound of my own heartbeat.

Rafe gripped my hand. “Babe… are you okay?”

I opened my mouth.

And for a second—I swear—I heard another heartbeat. Inside me. Out of rhythm. Wrong.