Rain struck the glass window like a desperate knock from a forgotten god. Isabella Saint stood behind the reception counter, her hospital ID badge swinging slowly as the cold air from the hallway brushed against her neck.
It was just past midnight. The hour where silence didn't feel peaceful — it felt dangerous.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she clutched the last file of the night. It was her fourth shift this week, and the sleeplessness was starting to show in the curve of her shoulders and the shadows under her eyes. But no one noticed. No one ever did.
The doctors barely knew her name. The nurses only called her when someone vomited or bled through their sheets. And the patients... they saw her as the girl who mopped up pain.
But tonight felt different.
Something — no, someone — had shifted the air.
She had felt it earlier, in Ward 12. Her mop had slipped from her hand and crashed to the floor when she looked up and caught a glimpse of a man's reflection in the mirror. A man standing directly behind her. But when she turned… the hallway was empty.
No footsteps. No door creak. No voice.
Just the cold chill sliding down her spine like a whisper that shouldn't exist.
Her eyes had stayed on that mirror, heart thundering, until she realized something even stranger.
The man in the reflection — he had no reflection of his own.
He wasn't looking at her.
He was watching her.
Now she stood in the breakroom, the scent of burnt coffee thick in the air, her palms still clammy, trying to convince herself that sleep deprivation could make even reality crack.
She pulled out her phone and opened her front camera. No man. No mirror behind her. Just the weary ghost of a girl trying to survive.
Isabella exhaled shakily and returned to her cleaning cart, pushing it toward the east wing. The hospital lights above her flickered — once, twice — before plunging the hallway into brief, suffocating darkness.
She froze.
The light blinked back on.
There, at the end of the hall.
A man stood in front of Room 312. Tall. Still. Too still. Like a statue that had forgotten it wasn't supposed to move.
He was wearing black. Not the kind of black that blended into shadows — the kind that demanded attention. His coat fit like a second skin, pressed and perfect, the collar high and sharp.
Isabella's breath caught in her throat.
He hadn't been there a second ago. She was sure. She had just passed that hallway.
His face was partially hidden under the tilt of his head, but from where she stood, she could see the sharp line of his jaw, the smooth paleness of his skin, and hair so dark it looked almost blue under the fluorescent light.
He wasn't a patient. He didn't belong to any department. And yet he stood there as though he owned the building.
Something inside her screamed to walk away. But her legs moved toward him instead.
Each step echoed louder than it should have.
The air around him was colder. Not from the air conditioning. It was the kind of cold that wrapped around her bones and made her fingers feel numb.
He didn't move.
She stopped a few feet from him, her voice shaky. "Excuse me, sir. Visiting hours are over."
He turned. Slowly. Deliberately.
And then she saw his eyes.
They were not brown. Not hazel. Not even the bright blue she sometimes dreamed about.
They were silver. Metallic. Cold.
Like frozen lightning.
He looked at her the way someone looks at a puzzle missing one final piece. Like he'd seen her before — not in this life, but somewhere much older, much darker.
"I'm not visiting," he said.
His voice was low. Rich. Like velvet soaked in thunder.
"I'm looking."
Her throat went dry. "Looking for what?"
His lips curved slightly, the ghost of a smile that didn't reach those strange, dangerous eyes.
"You."
Her heart slammed once, then twice, faster than it should.
Before she could speak, he stepped forward. Just one step. And yet it felt like the walls themselves leaned in to listen.
"I believe you dropped this," he said, holding out her ID badge — the one clipped to her shirt just seconds ago.
She looked down. It was gone.
She hadn't even felt him take it.
Her fingers shook as she reached out and took it back.
He didn't let go immediately. His fingers brushed hers.
Cold.
Unnaturally cold.
Then he turned and walked away without a sound, his footsteps swallowed by the hallway.
She stood there, frozen, breath shallow, heart racing.
She didn't know his name. She didn't know where he'd come from.
But deep down, in a part of her soul she never dared listen to, Isabella Saint knew one thing for certain.
Her life would never be the same again.