Noah walked home the same way every day. Head down, hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie, eyes fixed on the cracks in the pavement. Step over them. Don’t stop. Keep walking.

The wind cut through the evening air, crisp with the promise of autumn, but he didn’t shiver. The cold wasn’t what sent a chill down his spine. It was him.

A shadow stretched too long against the sidewalk, moving without a source. A presence just behind him, just close enough that he could feel the weight of eyes burning into the back of his head. And then—

"Can you see me?"

The voice was deep, smooth, a whisper that shouldn’t have been heard over the rustling trees, but somehow curled around his thoughts like it had been spoken from inside his skull. Noah’s breath hitched. He wouldn’t look. Wouldn’t acknowledge it. Wouldn’t let the thing lurking at his back know that he could.

His grip on his phone tightened, knuckles white. Keep walking. Step over the cracks. One, two, three—

"Can you see me?"

His pulse quickened, but his pace stayed steady.

Every day, this was how it went. The whisper. The question. The weight of something just behind him, stretching into the edges of his periphery, a shape he refused to let sharpen into clarity. If he ignored it long enough, it would go away. It had to.

But that night, as Noah stepped up to the front door of his house, he felt it. A shift. A wrongness.

Veyrn was still there.

Still watching.

And this time, he wasn’t leaving.