The window wouldn't stop shaking.
Hale sat on the fourth floor of the library, rain misting gently against the tall panes.
But the sound wasn't like rain.
It was rhythmic.
Tapping.
Like fingernails.
Like counting.
Like… waiting.
He didn't remember walking here.
Didn't remember the last period ending.
Or taking the stairs.
Or choosing this exact desk, in this exact corner, at this exact moment.
All he knew was that he blinked—
—and the rain was tapping in triplets.
Three taps.
Pause.
Three taps again.
A pattern. Morse? Code? Knocking?
Then—
Silence.
He looked up.
In the faint reflection on the glass, something moved behind him.
Something tall.
Crooked.
Wrong.
He turned.
Nothing.
Just books. Shelves. Lamps humming softly.
But when he looked back at the window—
The reflection remained.
A figure stood directly behind him, as if it had always been there.
Breathing.
Its head tilted.
Watching.
One hand gently resting on his shoulder—
Except nothing touched him.
Except the room was cold.
Except his chest ached—
The mark burned.
He stood too fast, the chair clattering backward.
The reflection lingered one beat too long—
Then melted into mist.
Hale sat on the floor of his bedroom, sketchpad open in his lap.
He didn't remember coming home.
Didn't remember walking.
The sketchpad was just there—opened to a blank page.
He drew.
Frantic. Shaky.
The figure. The glass. The time.
The mark. The library. The shadow behind him.
In the margins, he wrote one word again and again:
Who.
A knock.
Hale flinched hard.
Then:
"Ivy?" he called.
Her voice, muffled through the door. "You okay?"
"…How did you find me?"
A pause. Then something slid under the door.
A torn notebook page—his handwriting across the bottom:
"If anything happens, find Ivy.
She knows.
Don't trust the glass."
Dated: two days from now.
He stared.
Opened the door.
Ivy stood there. Soaked from the rain. Glasses fogged. Unmoving.
"I think we're being watched," she said quietly.
Then handed him something else.
A polaroid.
He stared.
It was him, in the library, at the same desk.
Same angle.
Same moment.
And behind him?
The figure.
Tall. Crooked. Bent in all the wrong places.
Its arms hung too long.
Its head too low.
The timestamp:
3:12 AM. Tonight.
Hale's voice was barely a whisper. "Where… did you get this?"
Ivy didn't speak right away.
She looked down—then up, like she was trying to decide how much to say.
And finally:
"We've been here before."
Her voice cracked slightly.
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out another photo.
Same library.
Same desk.
Same figure.
But Hale wasn't in it.
Only the shadow.
Only the mark glowing faintly on the table surface.
Across the bottom, in bleeding red ink:
"It found the wrong version of you."
Hale looked at Ivy.
Just for a second, her face broke—a flicker of something fragile and sad, like she remembered too much.
Then it was gone.