"But I still don't get it," Kaiden said as he sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the spot where the man had vanished. "Why would they put dangerous criminals in the same place as students? And don't tell me they're locked, one of them literally walked into my room."
The goddess leaned against the wall.
"They don't leave their cages," she said.
Kaiden scoffed. "Then what do you call what I just saw? Because that thing had fingers, teeth, and a plan to eat me."
She turned her head slightly and looked at him, her eyes unreadable.
"What you saw was not the man," she said. "It was only a fraction of his consciousness. A fragment. A shadow produced by his soul."
Kaiden frowned. "So what, like… a ghost?"
"Not exactly," she replied. "A ghost is what remains when a soul refuses to pass on. What you saw was something different. It was imagination given shape. A mind so strong it can leak out of a body even when the body is sealed away."
That made his skin crawl in a whole new way.
