[The Ache That Wakes the Beast]
The city breathed in static.
Neon signs bled into the puddles below his apartment. Raindrops ticked against the rusted windowpane like tiny claws. Kael sat in silence, staring at the wall he hadn't painted in years. The wallpaper curled at the edges like old wounds refusing to close.
He hadn't slept. Not really.
The dreams had stopped pretending.
She was closer now. Too close. Her name hung in the silence like smoke.
"Elira…"
He whispered it like a confession.
The memory of her face wasn't perfect—no, it was better than perfect. It was unflawed, inhumanly exact. He could redraw every lash, every fleck of green in her eyes, even now. Especially now. It haunted him how easily beauty could mimic madness.
He pressed trembling fingers to his temples.
He hadn't killed in three nights.
The ache had grown teeth.
[The Ritual of the Blade]
He found the next one by accident.
A man in a trench coat followed a young girl too long through an underground station. Kael had seen men like that before—eyes hungry, hands twitching. Men who believed their fantasies had no consequence.
Kael followed him.
The man turned off into the subway's abandoned maintenance corridor, probably to relieve himself or worse. The perfect place for rot.
Kael stepped into the corridor behind him.
No introduction.
No warning.
The first cut sliced through the man's hamstring. He crumpled with a howl.
"Jesus—what the f—"
Kael didn't speak. Words were a waste on liars.
He pressed the blade to the man's throat and leaned close.
"Tell me about the girl."
The man whimpered. "I didn't—I wasn't—I didn't do anything."
Kael pressed harder.
"She wore red. Boots. Blue earbuds. You stared at her hips for five minutes. Why?"
Tears.
Piss.
Denial.
Kael's breath quickened. The man's mask broke faster than most.
And then the ritual began.
He made three cuts: one for the lie, one for the lust, one for the fear.
Only when the man admitted everything did Kael slit the throat.
Fast. Precise.
"She deserves better than to live in fear."
He whispered the words like a prayer.
The hunger eased for a moment.
But Elira's voice returned before the blood cooled.
"Is this how you find me?"
[The Thousand Faces of Her]
He didn't go home.
He couldn't.
The city was alive now—breathing in a rhythm that pulsed in time with the beat of his heart. Every window reflected her silhouette. Every billboard seemed to whisper her name in broken advertisements.
"Elira…"
The word had become a mantra. A drug. A curse.
He ducked into a 24-hour diner, though he wasn't hungry. He needed somewhere lit, somewhere human. But even here, in the clatter of cheap plates and murmurs of night workers, he felt her.
The waitress was young. Maybe nineteen. Her nametag read Emily.
Kael blinked.
For a moment, the letters shifted.
Elira.
His breath caught.
He looked up — the girl was smiling politely, her expression blank and bored. No green eyes. No silver dress. Just acne and tired eyeliner.
It wasn't her.
Of course it wasn't.
But the moment still rattled something loose in him.
He didn't order. Just sat at the booth and pulled the sketchpad from his backpack.
The cover was worn, the edges warped by sweat and blood. It had started as a way to silence the noise — rough outlines of faces he'd erased from the world.
But now, every page bore her.
Dozens of sketches. Hundreds.
Some were crude, done in frenzied bursts of inspiration — just her eyes, or the curve of her mouth. Others were labored over for hours — detailed portraits that shimmered with something almost alive.
He drew without blinking, hand moving as if possessed.
He didn't even realize his coffee had gone cold until the waitress came back.
"Sir? Are you okay?"
Kael looked up, startled.
His page showed Elira screaming.
"Yeah," he rasped. "Fine."
But her mouth had never opened in the dream.
Why was she screaming now?
[The Signs Speak Her Name]
The sketches weren't enough anymore.
Kael needed to know.
He scoured the internet that night. Obsessively.
Searching the name Elira led to dead ends — a rare name, old Hebrew meaning "God is my light," often misspelled.
But then he found it.
A thread on a forgotten forum. Archived ten years ago. The title:
"The Girl Who Visits Killers."
His breath hitched.
The post had only one entry:
"Her name is Elira. She comes in dreams, right before or after the first time. She whispers to those who take lives. I saw her. I saw her when I bled him out behind the church. She told me I was chosen.
If you've seen her, too, don't trust your memory.
She's not a person.
She's a wound that smiles."
— User deleted
Kael stared at the screen, fingers frozen above the keyboard.
The IP was traced to somewhere nearby. Within the city. Someone else had seen her. Someone else had killed — and been blessed.
He copied the thread. Printed it. Reread it until the ink smudged.
She's a wound that smiles.
The words sank into his mind like hooks.
He had to find more.
[The Other Room]
The address was buried in a comment chain. A location mentioned once, by someone responding to the original post. An abandoned house in the industrial district. Kael followed it the next night.
It was falling apart — a skeletal place of rusted iron and sagging rooflines. Once a warehouse, maybe. Now a forgotten carcass.
He stepped inside. The floorboards groaned.
The air was thick with dust and mildew. Somewhere in the walls, rats scurried. But Kael wasn't afraid.
He felt… welcomed.
Drawn.
At the far end of the hallway was a red door.
Unlike the rest, it was freshly painted.
He opened it.
Inside was a small room. No windows. No light except what leaked through the crack behind him.
And on the walls—
His breath caught.
Portraits. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
All of him.
Drawn in charcoal and ink.
Some as a child. Some covered in blood.
Some smiling.
Some screaming.
One with his mouth sewn shut.
Kael staggered back.
His knees hit the floor.
"What is this…?"
The sketches weren't copies of any photo. They were intimate. As if the artist had been watching him for years. As if Elira herself had drawn them.
In the center of the room stood an easel.
Blank canvas.
A single note pinned to it, handwritten:
"I see you, Kael. But do you see me?"
And beneath it, a spiral.
The same spiral that had appeared in his sketchbook.
The one he didn't remember drawing.
[The Voice, Not the Face]
He should've run.
But he couldn't.
Not when he heard it.
Her voice.
"You weren't supposed to come yet."
Kael spun.
The room was empty.
"You're rushing toward a fire you can't control."
"Where are you?" he shouted.
"Still behind the veil."
"Let me in."
"Not yet."
The walls shook. The drawings fluttered. One of them fell, revealing a message beneath:
"The next one is watching you, too."
A single address scrawled beneath it.
Then silence.
Only Kael's ragged breathing remained.
[The Man in the Mirror]
Kael didn't return to the red room the next day.
He couldn't.
The note had unsettled something primal in him. Not fear—no, he'd learned to live with fear. This was deeper. A trembling beneath the bones. A suspicion that maybe he wasn't the one hunting after all.
He stayed home, if it could still be called a home.
His apartment smelled of damp books and stale sweat. The kitchen sink overflowed with crusted dishes. A single bare bulb flickered above the table like a dying star.
He stood in front of the bathroom mirror for over an hour.
Not grooming.
Not thinking.
Just… staring.
At himself.
The scar on his cheek from childhood. The jawline that had hardened after his first kill. The eyes—his mother used to say they were too sharp for a boy. Now they barely blinked.
"Are you still in there?" he asked his reflection.
The mirror didn't answer.
But somewhere behind the glass, he saw movement.
Her silhouette. Watching.
Always watching.
He smashed the mirror.
And bled.
[The Echo Chamber]
He became obsessed with the address.
The one from the note.
It led to a small library on the edge of town—one of those government-funded ruins no one used anymore. The kind of place where time stopped mattering and dust made everything equal.
He visited at night, slipping in through the broken side door. The lights flickered. Half the shelves were bare.
In the farthest aisle, under Philosophy and Obscure Beliefs, he found a series of old tomes—handwritten journals, unlabelled. Bound in leather.
He opened one.
The handwriting was chaotic. Slanted. Rushed. The ink bled through the pages.
"I saw her after the third one. She only smiles when it hurts."
Next journal.
"She whispered my name from the ceiling. Her eyes were bleeding. I still kissed her."
Next.
"Each kill brings her closer. But she never truly arrives. Just… observes."
Kael's hands shook.
He flipped faster.
A pattern emerged—Elira was not unique to him. She had appeared to others. Murderers. Psychopaths. Artists of pain.
But none had seen her twice in the flesh.
Only in dreams.
Except for one.
A journal near the bottom.
The pages were newer.
The handwriting was precise. Cold.
"I met her in real life. In a church. Her dress was silver. She didn't speak, but I heard her name in my head. I followed her. She vanished."
Kael read the last line over and over:
"She is not the reward. She is the test."
[Blood, Again]
The third kill wasn't planned.
It happened because the voices got too loud.
He was walking home from the library, the wind screaming through alleyways, when he saw a man beating his dog.
Not yelling.
Not disciplining.
Beating.
With a belt.
Again and again.
Kael's hands moved before his thoughts did.
The man had no time to scream.
This one wasn't for ritual.
This one was instinct.
Feral.
It wasn't until Kael wiped the blade on the man's jeans that he realized how fast his heart was beating.
The blood shimmered under moonlight.
The dog, a trembling little mutt, barked once—then ran.
Kael sat down beside the body.
Waited for her voice.
It didn't come.
Instead—
A whisper behind his right ear.
Male.
"You're going too fast."
He turned.
No one.
Only the rustle of trash bags and the sound of distant sirens.
He looked up.
A symbol carved into the alley wall.
A spiral.
The same as in the red room.
But this one dripped fresh blood.
[Dream Spiral]
That night, Kael dreamed again.
But it was different.
This time, he wasn't a child. He was older. Hardened.
And she wasn't waiting in the light.
She stood across from him in a mirrorless hallway, her face veiled in silk.
"Why are you rushing?" she asked.
"I need to understand," he said. "What you are. Why me."
She didn't answer.
Instead, she placed a hand over her chest.
Where her heart should be.
A second mouth opened there. Small. Vertical. Like a wound trying to speak.
The mouth whispered: "You are the cut, Kael."
He woke with blood on his hands.
His own.
From where he'd clenched his fists so hard his nails broke skin.
But the blood smelled like her.
Like memory and fire.