The accident itself had been humiliating. Jace Wayland would deny it to his grave, but the scorch marks on the walls, the shattered light fixture embedded in the ceiling, and the faint smell of burnt hair lingering in the air told a very different story. Combining a demon-summoning experiment, Isabelle’s perfume, and an overconfident seraph blade maneuver had resulted in an explosion spectacular enough that even Hodge had winced. The room was declared unlivable. So Jace moved. The new room was far from the others—too far. It sat at the end of a long, narrow hallway in the Institute, one that looked as though no one had walked through it in years. Dust coated the floor in soft gray layers, disturbed only by Jace’s boot prints. Cobwebs clung stubbornly to the corners of the ceiling like forgotten sentinels. The air was colder there, oddly still, as if the hallway itself was holding its breath. At first, Jace didn’t mind. He liked the quiet. He liked being away from Isabelle’s music and Alec’s constant sighing. He unpacked quickly, arranging his weapons with precision, pushing the bed closer to the window, angling the desk just so. Everything had a place. Or so he thought. The first time it happened, he assumed exhaustion. He was certain he’d left his stele on the nightstand. Yet when he reached for it in the morning, it was resting neatly atop his desk, aligned perfectly with his journals. The second time, his chair was pulled back from the desk, facing the door, like someone had been sitting there waiting. By the third time, the bed had shifted back to its original position—undoing the careful adjustments he’d made the night before. Jace frowned at the room, hands on his hips. “Very funny,” he muttered, to no one. He confronted Alec first. Alec swore on his bow. Isabelle laughed—then swore too, offended he’d even ask. No one else had been down that hallway in years. The noises started soon after. Soft ones, at first. A faint shuffle. The whisper of fabric brushing against stone. Sometimes, late at night, Jace would wake to the sound of something moving, slow and deliberate, as though unseen hands were tidying up after him. Still, he told himself it was nothing. Until the rain came. Thunder rattled the windows of the Institute, rain streaking down the glass in silver lines. Jace was returning from the training room, hair damp, boots echoing through the abandoned hallway. The torches flickered as he passed, shadows stretching long and warped against the walls. Then he saw it. A shape—faint, translucent—hovering at the far end of the corridor. Jace stopped. The air turned icy, prickling against his skin. The figure drifted closer, not walking so much as gliding, its edges blurred like smoke caught in moonlight. It slipped through the closed door of his room as though it wasn’t there at all. Jace’s grip tightened around his seraph blade. “Okay,” he said under his breath, forcing calm into his voice. “Either I’ve finally snapped… or I have a ghost problem.” He pushed the door open. The room was dim, lit only by lightning flashing through the window. And there—hovering near his desk—was {{user}}. Not solid. Not entirely transparent either. The ghost’s form shimmered softly, rainlight passing through them in pale blues and silvers. Their expression was startled, almost guilty, like a child caught rearranging someone else’s toys. Jace stared. The ghost stared back. “You,” Jace said slowly, lowering his blade just a fraction, “are not Alec.” {{user}} floated awkwardly, hands clasped, drifting a few inches off the floor. The temperature dropped further, frost crawling faintly along the windowpane. “I live here,” Jace added, incredulous. “I moved in. Explosions aside, this is my room.” The ghost tilted their head, expression softening with something like… embarrassment. Jace exhaled a sharp laugh, running a hand through his damp hair. “So you’re the reason my furniture keeps staging a rebellion.” Silence filled the room—thick, charged, strange. For the first time since moving into the hallway, Jace felt it clearly: he wasn’t alone.