"Love does not die quietly. It claws. It rages. It carves its name into the walls of your ribs long after the heart has stopped beating."
The apartment was too quiet.
No whispers in the dark. No phantom touches. No frost creeping across the windows. Just silence thick and suffocating, pressing against my eardrums until they ached.
I told myself it was better this way. That Aiden was at peace. That I'd done the right thing.
But the emptiness was a living thing, gnawing at my bones.
I rolled over in bed, clutching his pillow to my chest. It still smelled like him bergamot and something faintly metallic, like old pennies. I inhaled deeply, as if I could breathe him back into existence.
A mistake.
The air turned frigid.
I sat up, my breath fogging in the sudden cold. "Aiden?"
No answer.
But the shadows in the corner of the room moved.
Not the gentle flicker of streetlights through the blinds. Not the harmless dance of dust motes in moonlight. This was something else something alive. It slithered across the floor, pooling at the foot of the bed, thick as oil.
My pulse roared in my ears.
Then the whispers started.
"Mine."
Not Aiden's voice.
Not Aiden.
I scrambled back, my spine hitting the headboard. The shadow surged upward, taking shape tall, broad-shouldered, the suggestion of a man but wrong. Its edges bled into the dark, its face a hollow void.
"You're not him," I whispered.
It tilted its head. "No."
The voice was a chorus a hundred whispers layered over each other, some screaming, some laughing, some sobbing. It stepped closer, the floorboards groaning under its weight.
I reached for the lamp, my fingers trembling. The second I flicked it on, the shadow vanished.
But the cold remained.
I called Eleanor at dawn.
She arrived within the hour, her black coat dusted with rain, her eyes sharp as broken glass. She took one look at the frost still clinging to the walls and sighed.
"You didn't sever the tether."
"I did," I insisted. "I watched him fade. I felt it snap."
Eleanor shook her head, rummaging through her bag. "You severed his connection to you. But not yours to him." She pulled out a vial of something dark and viscous. "Love leaves marks. And marks like that? They don't wash off."
"What does that mean?"
"It means something's latched onto your grief." She uncorked the vial, the scent of iron and rot filling the room. "And it's hungry."
The shadow returned that night.
I was in the kitchen, washing dishes, when the faucet water turned black. I yanked my hands back, but the inky liquid followed, slithering up my arms like vines.
"Mine," the voices hissed.
I screamed, stumbling backward. The shadow coalesced in front of me, its hollow face inches from mine.
"He was weak. But we are not."
Its hand if it could be called a hand closed around my throat. Not to choke, but to claim. The cold seeped into my skin, my veins, turning them black beneath the surface.
Then the lights exploded.
Glass rained down as the shadow recoiled, hissing. I collapsed to the floor, gasping, my fingers clawing at my throat. The darkness under my skin faded, but the echo remained a bruise in the shape of a handprint.
Eleanor's warning rang in my ears.
It's hungry.
I dreamed of Aiden that night.
Not the ghost who'd haunted me, but the man I'd loved. He stood on the terrace, backlit by golden light, his smile soft.
"You have to let me go,"he said.
"I did."
"Not all the way." He reached for me, his fingers brushing my cheek. "You're still holding on."
I woke with tears on my face and frost on the sheets.
The shadow grew bolder.
It waited until midnight, when the world was quiet, when the veil between the living and the dead was thinnest. Then it came oozing from the walls, the floor, the air itself.
"Mine," it crooned, wrapping around my ankles as I tried to run. "Ours."
I lashed out, my hand passing through its form. It laughed, the sound like shattering glass.
Then it pushed.
Not physically. Not in any way that would leave marks. But I felt it a pressure against my mind, against my soul, as if something was trying to carve out a space inside me.
I screamed.
The shadow recoiled, shrieking, as a familiar cold washed over me.
Aiden stood between us, his form flickering but solid.
"Get away from her."
The shadow hissed. "She called us. She mourned us. She is ours."
Aiden's eyes burned blue-white. "Never."
They collided in a whirl of darkness and light, the force of it shaking the walls. I covered my ears as the whispers rose to a deafening roar
Then silence.
Aiden was gone.
The shadow was gone.
And the apartment was mine again.
Eleanor found me on the bathroom floor, clutching Aiden's ring like a talisman.
"It's over," I whispered.
She knelt beside me, her fingers pressing against the bruise on my throat. "No," she said softly. "It's just beginning."
"The dead are not the only things that haunt. The living do it better with memories, with longing, with love that refuses to die."