"Happy birthday to you!"
Their voices rang out in practiced harmony, bright, cheerful, almost too loud. I blinked, disoriented, my face probably betraying every trace of exhaustion from the night before. My eyes ached from lack of sleep, and my limbs still held the soreness of wandering the city on foot, dodging patrol lights and sticking to the shadows. But I forced a smile. Or something close to it.
I had made it back just before dawn. Slipped in through, peeled off my shoes silently, and crept into bed like nothing had happened. And now I was here again. In this house that never quite felt like mine.
"Look at our birthday boy." My mother said, her voice bright with that brittle enthusiasm she always used on special occasions. "You're getting taller. When did that happen?"
My father gave a small nod, arms crossed, like he'd just finished mentally checking off a to-do list.
But the truth was obvious, even if it remained unsaid. We didn't come all the way back here just for my birthday. Work brought them. Whatever it was this time. They just choose this period to also commemorate my birthday.
I sat at the table and let them light the cake. I let them hand me a gift bag with clothes inside. I nodded, I smiled, I said thank you. I played the part.
The other man was there too, standing a bit off to the side, arms loose at his sides, as if he wasn't sure whether to fully join the celebration or just observe it from the edges. My uncle, I thought. Or maybe a family friend. I couldn't remember clearly.
"Here." He said, stepping forward and holding something out to me.
I took it automatically, not expecting much. But the shape in my hands stopped me. A small wooden toy, hand carved. I blinked, recognizing it. So, that was what he was going to give me all along? Too bad I wasn't interested in it anymore.
Still, I nodded politely and played with the toy. They laughed, all three of them. So, I smiled too. Basic manners.
The day went on like any other in that house, at least, that's what I told myself. That's what I hoped for. A quiet day. Normal. Uneventful. The kind of day you could almost believe would stretch on forever if you didn't look too closely.
But reality always has a way of making itself known.
After the cake was cut, the songs sung, and the wooden toy neatly tucked away on the shelf, I heard the sound, faint but unmistakable. Zippers. The soft thud of luggage being opened. Papers shuffled. Clothes folded back into place with practiced efficiency.
When I peeked into the hallway, there they were, my parents, moving around like they were cleaning up a hotel stay.
Packing. Of course they were packing.
The suitcases had never been fully emptied in the first place. They hadn't come to stay. They had come to visit.
One week. Just one week. How did I forget that?
It wasn't like they ever said we were staying longer. They had work, obligations, meetings in places I never was before. I knew that. But in the quiet spaces between those thoughts, I think I let myself believe, just for a while, that maybe things would change. That maybe, just maybe, they'd stay in a single place.
But the truth was already in motion. The zippers were closing. The car was likely already gassed up and ready. The schedule always ruled everything.
And that meant… That meant I would be alone again.
"Could we stay?" I asked my father. He didn't even look up from folding his blazer.
"No, we need to go." He replied, flat, automatic. Like it had already been decided weeks ago. Like the words were printed on the inside of his mouth.
I turned to my mother instead.
"Can we stay?" Her hands paused briefly as she zipped up her makeup bag, but only for a second.
"Sorry, but we need to go." She echoed, with the same gentle finality. Her tone sounded soft, but there was no give in it. No door left open.
I stood there, watching them move around.
It didn't matter how I asked. The answer would stay the same. It had always been the same.
So I did the only thing left, I turned to the other adult in that place.
"Can I stay?" I asked, quieter now.
He looked up, genuinely confused for a moment. "Hm? I mean…it's best for a child to stay with their parents, right?" He gave a half-shrug, as if that ended the conversation.
But I didn't nod. I didn't say anything at all.
Because I already knew what he meant.
You're just a kid. You belong with them. And they don't belong to any single place.
No one had to say it aloud anymore. It was written in the way they never unpacked. In the way their eyes always looked past this place, like they were already somewhere else.
There was no use. No argument I could make, no look I could give, would change anything. The decision had been made long before I even thought to ask.
So…if I couldn't stay, then I should at least say goodbye to her, right?
That was the only thing I had left. One last walk to the playground. One last glimpse of her. Just a word, just a look, just something.
I crept towards the wooden gate. Wooden. Heavy. Slightly warped from years of sun and rain, but with just enough give to slip through the gap if you pushed carefully. I'd done it before. I reached for the edge and…
"What do you think you're doing?"
My father's voice struck like a bolt of ice against my spine. He stood behind me, arms crossed. His tone left no room. Not for negotiation. Not even for questions.
I stood frozen, one hand still resting against the door. The same door that had once let me escape into the world that mattered. The world she was in. But now, it may as well have been a wall.
Still just a child in their eyes. A passenger. A piece of luggage they were always ready to pack away again.
"I need to say something."
My voice cut through like a stone into still water.
Three heads turned toward me, my father, my mother, and my uncle, each caught off guard by the sudden authority in my tone.
I'd never demanded much before. But everything I've trained with her was for this moment. So, I stood up straight, met their eyes, and said it all.
"I've been leaving the house every night. For a week now. I walked across the city while you slept. I saw the empty streets, the sirens. I passed under fences, avoided patrols, and kept walking…to see her. There's a girl I met. She goes to the playground after three. I have to say goodbye to her. Please."
There. All of it. Exposed and trembling in the air between us. For a moment, no one spoke.
My mother blinked in disbelief, her lips parting slightly. "What are you talking about? Why would any girl be staying out there in the middle of the night?" She tried to laugh it off, but her confusion clung to her voice like static. "You…you're joking, right?"
I shook my head once.
My father's face darkened, not with fear, but something worse: frustration. "Have you heard we talking about the serial killer? I told you two to be quieter."
"Couldn't we at least go check with him?" But my parents didn't even pause to consider it.
"Don't indulge him." My mother said sharply. "He's just fabricating stories. Probably dreamed all of it after overhearing us talk about the case."
"Yes." My father agreed. "Children have vivid imaginations. Especially when they want attention."
And just like that, everything I said, everything that had meant so much to me, was reduced to a childish fantasy. A lie. A product of boredom and overexposure to late-night adult conversations.
There was no anger in me. Not then. Only something heavier.
This was why it was so hard for me to speak in the first place. Why I'd spent years perfecting the art of silence. Because I always knew, deep down, that no matter what words I chose, no matter how carefully I stitched the truth together…
There are people in this world who will never hear you. Not because they can't. But because they refuse to believe there's anything worth listening to.
So, against my will, we left that day.
I watched the town fade behind the car window, its narrow streets and distant treetops swallowed by the morning mist. The treehouse, the song, the playground, all of it vanished like a dream the moment you open your eyes.
Not before I heard her humming the lullaby one last time.
2014
One year had passed since then. A year of suitcases being zipped shut, of cities flashing past through fogged-up car windows. From excavation site to ruin, from hotels to hollow apartments, I followed their every move: obedient, silent, invisible.
I hadn't tried to speak to them again. Not really. Not after that day.
I had learned my lesson. That words, my words, meant nothing to them. I wasn't their son with thoughts or needs or memories. I was just the quiet child who knew how to adapt, how to blend in, how to cause no trouble. So, I returned to what I knew best.
Silence. Old habits, after all, die hard.
And yet, some things never stopped stirring beneath the surface. Quiet didn't mean empty. Because even if I never dared say it out loud, I knew. I believed. That one day, we would return to that town.
I never asked for it. Never hinted. Never reminded them.
Of course they had forgotten what I told them. To them, it was nothing more than a childish lie, something they'd brushed off as a birthday delusion, like a toy they didn't want but still felt obligated to gift.
But for me, that place was something else entirely. A memory I sharpened each day so I wouldn't forget it. A name I mouthed in the dark just to remind myself it had once been real. A promise made silently between stars and our eyes.
And then, finally, the moment came.
My father mentioned, in passing, that he needed to visit my uncle again. He didn't say why. Business, maybe. A favor, perhaps. The reason didn't matter. Because to me, that visit meant one thing.
We were going back. Back to that town.
Everything unfolded like a scene I had already memorized, a broken videotape playing the same frames over and over again. My uncle stood waiting at the gate, arms folded, posture casual as if nothing had changed in a year. As if a whole world hadn't passed me by while I waited in silence.
My parents returned to their old house with the same methodical efficiency, carrying luggage and folders.
Still, when I stepped through the gate and onto the familiar stone path, the first thing I saw was that toy. The same wooden trinket my uncle had given me last year. It lay there by the fence, warped from sun and rain, its once-sanded surface now cracked and forgotten.
Abandoned. Discarded.
My eyes lingered on it for a moment. I didn't pick it up.
Not because I didn't want it, but because it had never meant anything in the first place. A hollow object given out of obligation. An echo of a celebration that was never really about me.
Not even my uncle noticed it as we passed by. Not my parents, either.
And then came the cruelest irony of all. The lie I had told them a year ago.
The "dream" they had dismissed. The "fabrication" they had so easily filed away in the back of their minds, like a child's fantasy or a misremembered story. That lie had become their truth.
They believed in it more than they believed in me. Believed I had made it all up, some fever dream inspired by late-night whispers and the shadow of a serial killer haunting the news. To them, none of it had ever happened.
And because they completely forgot about it…they didn't see it coming. They didn't even notice when I quietly retraced my steps… When the clock hit 3:00 AM, and I was already slipping through the same gate they thought I had never passed through.
Not a single floorboard creaked. Not a single breath was out of place. I had practiced this escape a hundred times in my mind.
The city, still wrapped in its hush, welcomed me back like an old friend. I knew every turn, every shadow, every streetlight that flickered just before I passed under it. My feet carried me forward, not just out of longing, but with purpose.
Because I wasn't chasing a lullaby anymore. I was heading toward something I knew was real.
A meeting long fated. A promise older than memory. A voice that had changed me, even when the world insisted it never existed.
And as I crossed that final street and stepped into the familiar silence of the playground district…
Yes. There was no lullaby. No soft melody carried by the wind, no familiar hum threading through the night air like a secret meant only for me. Just silence. Cold, absolute silence.
And maybe that was how it always should've been. Because by all logic, by the rules of this world, a girl humming to herself miles away should never have reached me in the first place. Sound doesn't bend through streets like a thread of fate. Whispers don't echo across entire cities. That's not how reality works.
And yet…it had happened. I had heard her. Her voice had found me in the dark, more vivid than any dream, more certain than anything my parents ever told me.
But tonight, nothing. No song. No sign. No pull.
The city felt heavier without it… As if the silence were pressing inward from the buildings, sinking into the pavement, resting against my skin.
Of course she wouldn't be singing every night. Of course she wouldn't be sitting there humming for a whole year, waiting like some fairy-tale ghost frozen in time, hoping I'd return.
She had her own life. She had moved on.
The playground lay lifeless. Silent. Still. The swings barely stirred in the wind, and the slide, once gilded in moonlight and memory, now looked smaller. Emptier. She wasn't here.
No footprints. No faint traces of her voice. Only the creaking hush of metal and the quiet rustle of leaves.
I see now… That's why there were no police cars patrolling the streets. No curfew sirens. No whispers of danger curling through alleyways. The tension that once strangled the city: gone. It had returned to being just a regular, quiet town. Like nothing had ever happened.
But that made the silence even louder.
Did the serial killer…stop? Did the cops finally catch him? Or was it her? Did she find him? Did she take revenge with the same calm resolve she carried in her eyes?
My breath caught. I didn't know what I wanted the answer to be. Then maybe that's why she wasn't here anymore.
She had told me, that last night we met.
About how, after everything, she couldn't live in her old house anymore. Not after what happened.
The place where she was supposed to feel safe had become something else entirely, a shell filled with echoes, memories, and ghosts that wouldn't stop whispering. Her relatives wanted to adopt her, but she didn't want that. She said she didn't want a new life.
So instead, she chose the treehouse.
Not many even knew it existed. Not her relatives. Not the authorities. It had been her private little sanctuary even before the murders, a hidden place stitched together from scraps and stubbornness, built by some long-forgotten family, but reclaimed by her.
After everything, she moved in for real.
She told me she still returned to the old house now and then, mostly for quick things. To take baths. And to cook. But she couldn't sleep there anymore. Not even for a night.
She said the silence in the walls was worse than any nightmare.
As for the lights? They had been cut off months after the incident. But she was clever. She figured out a way to reroute power from a nearby streetlamp, quietly, invisibly. A small crime, maybe, but one committed for survival. No one noticed. No one cared.
She once told me that she wouldn't allow herself to start a new life until she had finished burying the old one.
It was about completing something. Putting a full stop where her life had once been left dangling in mid-sentence. She didn't want to carry loose ends into the next chapter, not even the smallest thread. Her way of honoring herself was by tying it all off, very memory, every scar, every song she ever hummed in the dark.
And if that was true… Then she wouldn't be in the treehouse anymore. Not waiting there like a ghost from my memories.
And she certainly wouldn't be at her old house either, not that I ever learned where it actually was.
No, if she was true to her word then she had already moved on. She had already said goodbye. To her past. To this town.
But I knew where the treehouse was… Could she still be there?
The thought felt fragile, like chasing a shadow in the fading light. The chances were slim, she could have moved on, disappeared into some other city, some other life. And if that were true, meeting her again would be impossible.
Maybe someday, years from now, after I'm old enough to search properly, to dig through the traces of her past and find the girl who once hummed a lullaby just for me. But right now, I'm still a child, too small, too quiet, too unsure.
And even if I do find her again, I wonder if she would remember me, the boy she met for just a week, so long ago…
No. I can't let myself wander down that road. She can still be at the treehouse. She has to be.
I will find her there. I need to find her.
Because if I don't, if I let this chance slip away, the last traces of what makes me human will wither until nothing remains but the silent robot my parents expect me to be. And then, I will truly become nothing more than an empty husk.
Silence trailed in my wake as I approached the treehouse. There it stood, cradled in the broad arms of the ancient oak, its weathered planks pressed tight against each other, as if guarding some long-forgotten confidence. High above the ground, it felt more distant than ever, like a secret I'd nearly lost the memory of.
My heart clenched. At first glance, nothing looked different, no fresh carvings, no new patchwork of boards. Yet somehow it wasn't the same. The wood had grown duller, its edges frayed by another year of seasons. The small window where she once perched was dark and empty, its sill mottled with moss. The rope ladder hung limp, the rungs worn but untouched, swinging gently with the breeze.
It felt abandoned.
I stood below, looking up at that quiet silhouette against the sky, and wondered how long it had been since she'd last hummed her lullaby here. The air was too still, the shadows too deep. Even the leaves overhead had ceased their whispering.
For a moment, I let the hush wash over me, and then, steeling myself, I reached for the first rung.
The air grew heavier as I climbed the rickety ladder, each creak echoing in the silent night. When I pushed open the small, creaking door of the treehouse, a wave of stale, damp odor hit me first, a choking mix of decay and earth, thick with the scent of rot and something sharp, metallic.
Inside, the dim moonlight spilled through the cracked window, revealing the still shape in the corner. My breath caught.
Her body lay slumped against the rough wooden wall, twisted unnaturally, as if frozen in a moment of shock and pain. The chest bore a deep, dark scar, a jagged hole where something had pierced long ago, now nothing but brittle bone and ragged tissue.
The skin had shriveled and darkened with time, pulled taut over skeletal curves, patches of leathery mummification clinging to exposed bones. In places, the flesh was completely gone, revealing bleached white ribs and the sharp edges of her spine. The humidity had slowed full decomposition, preserving fragments of sinew and skin in a grotesque stillness.
Her clothing, which hung in tattered strips, faded and brittle from sun and rain. Some of the fabric had fused with moss and lichen growing from the damp wood beneath her, nature slowly reclaiming this forgotten corner.
Small plants had sprouted through gaps in the floorboards, creeping tendrils reaching toward her like silent witnesses to her fate.
Scavenger marks marred the exposed bones, tiny chips and scratches from small animals that had come to feed, long after her death.
A thick layer of dust settled over the floor, disturbed only by the faint imprint of her last, final struggle.
The air hung heavy, still a mournful silence in a place where life had long since fled. I felt the weight of a year's absence pressing down, cold and final.
No… This can't be happening.
My knees trembled as I stepped forward, each footfall sounding louder than it should in the thick silence. The air felt thinner the closer I got, like the space itself was resisting me, like it didn't want me to see her like this. But I couldn't stop now. I couldn't look away.
There she was. The body that had once been Ele.
Her arms rested limply at her sides, bent oddly from where she had collapsed. Her fingers, half-mummified, were curled inward, as if reaching for something, maybe for help, maybe for strength. But no help had come.
No tears fell. My chest tightened, but nothing came out. No sob. No cry. Just the sound of my own heartbeat, loud and unreal.
I scanned the scene, eyes flicking instinctively, clinically, like I was reading the pages of a book I didn't want to understand.
There, near her corpse, lay the murder weapon.
A knife. Rusted now, but still cruel in its shape. Its blade crusted over with what little dried blood had not flaked away over the seasons. It had been abandoned here like the rest of her, as if even the killer no longer cared.
I didn't touch it.
Beside her, half-covered in dead leaves and dust, was the handgun she always carried. The one she said made her feel safe. I picked it up with careful hands.
The grip was cracked. The barrel cold. I checked the cylinder, bullets still inside. All of them.
But the mechanism… It was jammed. One of the springs inside had corroded, frozen mid-motion. It wouldn't have fired, no matter how hard she pulled the trigger.
A sick, hollow feeling took root in my stomach. She had tried. She had tried to fight.
She must've heard him coming.
The serial killer had found her hideout. And when he came, she was ready to defend herself…but her weapon failed her. And so he killed her. Just like that. And then walked away.
After all…she was a nobody.
No registered guardian. No school records. No relatives in town. No one to file a report. No one to raise their voice or hang missing posters. No one to even notice she was gone.
No one…except me.
I stared at what was left of her, and something finally clicked, something so simple, so painfully obvious that it made my stomach lurch.
Her clothes. That dress…
The same dark dress she wore the last time we met. The night she sang for me beneath the stars, eyes shut tight, voice soft and trembling. She said she'd gone back to her old house just to get it. Said she wanted to be at her best for her birthday.
And she was wearing it now.
It wasn't just any day. It was that day.
My legs went weak, and I knelt beside her, trembling. She died that night.
Not a week later. Not months after I left. No.
She died just hours after I walked away. Maybe even minutes.
My fingers gripped the floorboards of the treehouse as if I could hold myself together with splinters. The image of her standing there with her crooked smile flashed in my mind. Her humming still lingered in my ears, delicate and haunting.
I had heard her. I had heard her, just before we left the town.
That wasn't a dream. She was still alive…while we packed our bags. While I sat in the car, silent, hands curled into fists, trying to convince myself I had done all I could.
The day she died was also during her birthday: May 21, 2013.
Why didn't I go back? Why didn't I stay?
Was it pride? Cowardice? And now she was gone.
Not missing. Not hidden. Just…dead. Alone.
I had come to say goodbye…thinking there was a chance she had already moved on. Started a new life. Maybe even forgotten me.
But the truth was worse. She never got the chance to leave. And I…
I had left too soon. Too soon to save her. Too late to forgive myself.
The boy lay atop his bed, eyes wide open in the dark, the ceiling above him nothing but a shifting canvas of memories he couldn't blink away. He had tried, tried to sleep, tried to pretend it hadn't happened. But no matter how tightly he shut his eyes, the image returned: her lifeless body slumped inside the treehouse, locked forever in the past, the final note of her lullaby trapped in her throat.
Maybe that was why he noticed it first.
Before the crackle of flames, before the heat pressed through the walls, there was smoke. A bitter scent, thin at first, like someone burning something too long in the kitchen. But it grew stronger. Thicker. Acrid.
His lungs seized, coughing him awake with a jolt. He sat up fast, too fast, and immediately gagged. The air was no longer safe to breathe. The upper half of the room was filling with smoke. His instincts kicked in before panic had the chance to.
Drop low. He rolled off the bed, hitting the floor hard on his side but not caring. The smoke always rose, meaning the air near the floor would stay clean for just a little longer.
Think. Act. His eyes darted around the room.
Beside the bed, his towel from earlier still hung limply off the side of the dresser, damp from his bath. He snatched it without hesitation, tearing a long strip from the edge with his teeth and hands. His fingers trembled, not from fear, but urgency.
He pressed the damp cloth tightly over his mouth and nose, breathing shallowly. He remembered that the real killer in most house fires wasn't the flame, but the air. Carbon monoxide. Invisible. Silent. Lethal.
The floor vibrated faintly beneath him. A dull boom echoed from the hallway. Glass cracked. The heat was closing in.
All that mattered now was getting out.
He crawled through the smoky hallway, one arm over his mouth, the other dragging him forward like a soldier in a battlefield of heat and shadow. The wooden floor groaned beneath his weight, splinters cutting at his palms, but he didn't stop. Couldn't stop. His destination was his parents' room.
The door loomed ahead, half-ajar, a faint flicker of light slipping through the gap. He shoved it open with his shoulder.
At first, relief.
The fire hadn't reached the room yet. The smoke was lighter here, still swirling lazily across the ceiling. He could just make out the shapes on the bed. His mother. His father. Still laying there, tucked under the covers, peaceful in the half-dark.
But something was wrong. He called to them. No answer.
He called again, louder this time, almost choking on the smoke that slipped under the damp cloth. No movement.
He stepped closer, eyes adjusting, heart slowing into a hollow thud.
Then he saw it.
The sheets were stained. Not with ash or soot, but with something darker. Thicker. A spreading patch across the center of the bed. He moved to his father's side first, and the smell hit him before anything else: iron masked by the stronger reek of sulfur.
Blood.
His father's chest had been pierced, clean, deliberate, the mark of a blade driven straight through the ribs.
His mother lay the same. Her face turned slightly toward him, eyes closed. Her hands folded over her stomach, like someone had arranged her.
A knife lay discarded on the floor beside the bed. Its edge glinted red.
They weren't asleep. They hadn't fainted from smoke.
Someone had killed them.
The boy didn't scream. Didn't cry. His eyes merely scanned the room in a still, mechanical motion, as though trying to calculate whether any part of this made sense. Whether he should feel anything at all.
But nothing came. No tears. Just silence.
A part of him understood, deeply, instinctively, that something had been set in motion long ago. And this…this was just another echo of it.
Smoke pressed deeper into the room.
He stood there, breathing quietly through the cloth, staring at the bodies of the people who raised him. And for the first time in his life, he realized: He was truly, absolutely alone.
He turned around, stumbling back into the hallway as heat surged like a tidal wave behind him. His lungs burned, throat dry even behind the wet cloth pressed to his face. But he wasn't dead yet.
He could still survive.
He had to. Not just for his sake, but to understand. To remember. To never forget.
Because this fire wasn't an accident. This smoke, this searing air, this quiet tomb of ash, it had been orchestrated. Not a careless mistake, but a cover-up. An execution wrapped in flame.
Someone had killed his parents.
And then tried to erase the evidence.
A knife in their chests. A fire ignited in the night. Every piece was deliberate.
Someone had come for them. Not just to kill, but to delete them. The same someone who had killed her.
The boy's breath hitched.
The serial killer.
He had wondered if the killer had died, been caught, or simply disappeared. The curfew had been lifted. The streets returned to normal. No more midnight patrols. No more silence behind every alley.
The city had exhaled. But it was wrong. They were all wrong.
The killings hadn't stopped. They had paused. Waiting. Watching. Biding their time.
And now, like a ghost reemerging from fog. Right here. In his family's home. Another murder was committed.
He turned again, eyes watering, not from sorrow, not from grief, but from the sting of heat and vengeance. He would find and kill the serial killer.
He staggered down the wooden stairs, each step groaning under the growing weight of the blaze. Smoke swirled around him like a living thing, thick and suffocating, curling into his eyes and mouth. The fire was no longer a distant threat, it was a roaring, ravenous beast, devouring the house room by room.
The boy's vision blurred. His chest burned. But he didn't stop.
He had to get out. He had to survive.
The front door stood just ahead, warped from the heat but still intact. His feet hit the final step. Just a few more strides…
But the fire had already reached the kitchen.
He didn't even hear the warning creak of the pipes, or the subtle hiss of gas leaking into the flames. He only felt the instant change in the air, a sudden, sharp pressure, like the world had inhaled all at once.
A violent roar cracked through the house as the gas ignited.
An eruption of fire exploded outward from the kitchen, a tidal wave of heat and light that slammed through the hallway. In less than a heartbeat, flames engulfed the boy.
There was no time to run. No time to scream. The fire took him, wrapped around him like a molten cloak, searing through fabric, flesh, and breath alike.
For a moment, the world became light. Blinding, agonizing light.
And then, darkness. The door stood half-open, swaying on its hinges, just out of reach.
The boy was still alive. Just barely.
He lay crumpled near the threshold, where the front door hung crooked and broken, so close to escape, and yet unreachable. His skin, or what remained of it, was blackened and cracked, flaking away like brittle ash. The fire had scorched every inch of him, until even pain was something distant, abstract. He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't scream.
He was dying.
The air was thick with smoke and flame, but the world had grown strangely quiet. As if time itself had paused to watch his final moments. The boy's eyes, dry and glassy, remained open. They were the only part of him untouched, two black diamonds glinting faintly through the ash, reflecting the blaze around him.
And then, he realized… He wasn't alone.
There was someone standing in the fire with him. No...not someone. Something.
A figure materialized through the swirling smoke. Not born from the fire, but as if it had always been there, waiting. A girl.
She stood still, untouched by the flames, her form cloaked in darkness, every feature swallowed by shadow. A silhouette, thin and unmoving. Her long hair floated like ink in water. Her face was unreadable, no light touched it, but he could feel her gaze pressing down on him.
The boy's scorched lungs strained to draw breath. His mind struggled to understand. But somehow, somewhere deep inside, he knew.
That was me.
I had been waiting in the fire long before it reached him. And now, as life slipped away, I watched over him.
I had been watching him all along.
Every step he took. Every breath. Every fleeting emotion that passed through his heart like wind through dying leaves. I watched him across years, across the flickering lives he never knew he'd lived. His laughter, his silence, his helplessness. I knew them all intimately, more than he himself ever could.
Not just in this world.
But in every world.
In all the uncountable universes that have been born and crumbled into dust, I followed him. From the first spark of creation to the final, collapsing sigh of existence. From the first version of him, raw, flawed, infinite in potential, to all the iterations that came after. But it was only in the very first universe that the impossible still had room to breathe. Only there could a gaze be returned, could a whisper reach across the veil between being and unbeing.
In all the others, every echo, every reboot, every new beginning, reality grew colder. Stricter. Bound by laws that no longer bent. The unnatural was quarantined, the inexplicable erased. Magic became myth. Mystery became unreachable.
And in those universes, after the first one died…there was simply no way he would ever see me again.
Not truly. Not even if I stood inches from his face. Not even if I screamed.
Even so…he can see me.
Despite everything, the rules of this universe, the silence that separates our worlds, the barriers I was never meant to cross, he is staring straight at me. Eyes wide, not with fear, but with something gentler. Fainter. Like recognition.
Maybe it's because he's already at death's door. Maybe, in this liminal space between life and oblivion, the veil has grown thin enough for him to glimpse something beyond it. Something like me.
But still…why does he look glad?
His body is broken, charred beyond saving. His breath is shallow. He has no future left to dream of. And yet, when he looks at me, this impossible figure, this shadow he should not even perceive, his eyes soften. As if meeting a long-lost friend.
I don't know everything he's lived through. I can't see the full tapestry of his short, tragic life in this iteration. But... Somewhere, in some version of the infinite spirals of existence, he must have met someone like me. Someone who looked at him with something other than indifference. Someone who gave him a reason to hold on, even if only for a short while.
It must have been her.
Yes…that would be the only explanation. In one of the countless lives he's lived, he found her. A thread of impossibility woven into the rigid fabric of causality. A sliver of miracle.
A boy. A girl. A moment.
In a universe not meant for stories, they still managed to find one another.
And now, here at the end, he sees me, not because I am real in any scientific sense, not because I exist in any provable way, but because I am her, in whatever way she still lives inside him. Carried across lifetimes. Held within memory. A truth that persisted long after the world forgot her.
And so, against every law of the universe, against the silence that devours all things… I am here.
And he smiles.
With a bond established, he too can see me. Too bad that can only happen at death's door.
He will die here. And there is no way to save him.
After all, magic does not exist in this world.
Even so…
The girl, cloaked in shadow, her form flickering like smoke at the edge of existence, raised her hands. Between them, something began to form. Just an object, solid and silent, pulling itself from the nothingness.
It was a mask.
Not ornate, not adorned. Just one half of a hollow prolate spheroid, an elongated, oval shape, smoother than bone but darker than ash. A featureless thing. No eyes, no mouth. No expression. Like a stone shell carved from the absence of meaning itself.
Still, she lifted it. Without hesitation, she pressed the mask to her face.
And in that instant, reality flinched.
It did not shatter. It did not scream. It simply rewrote, quietly, efficiently, like a memory being overwritten by a stronger one. One version of truth replacing another, as if the old had never existed.
The girl was no longer there.
Where she had stood, now stood a boy.
A silhouette. Undefined by light or detail. His outline wavered against the flame-filled night, like a shadow that refused to be cast. But it was clear, the slouch of his posture, the narrow curve of his neck, the shape of his hands. A boy. Familiar.
Yet this was no mere transformation. It was a reflection. A convergence.
Without a second thought, the shadow knelt down and gently lifted the charred, crumbling body of the child into his arms. The blackened skin flaked away at the touch, but there was no strain. The corpse weighed nothing in the shadow's grip, as if grief itself made it lighter.
Turning from the collapsing hallway, the silhouette moved toward where the staircase had once been.
There were no stairs anymore.
The fire had consumed them, reducing the wooden spine of the house to glowing embers and yawning gaps. But that didn't matter. With each step the shadow took, the air itself gave way. Darkened stairs unfurled beneath him, ephemeral steps made of darkened matter. One step. Then another. And another. Carried by will alone, the figure rose through the inferno.
Soon, he stood before a scorched door.
Its knob had melted. The frame was cracked and blackened. But as his hand touched it, the handle returned, reshaped not by magic, but by the command of authority. He turned it.
The room beyond was drenched in firelight. And in the center, still upon their bed, lay the man and woman who had once called themselves parents. Their bodies were carbonized husks, blackened to the bone, unrecognizable to anyone who hadn't known them in life.
But the shadow didn't hesitate.
He stepped forward, gently laying the boy's corpse between them, between the mother and father who had not listened, not understood, but had still once been his world. He arranged the body with care, folding what remained of the arms across its chest, brushing away the flaking ash that clung to its face. A final gesture. A final cradle.
Then he stepped back.
He stood there for a moment, silent and unmoving, as the flames danced higher around the bed. They flickered like curtains in a breeze that did not touch him. The fire, which consumed everything else, dared not touch this final moment.
The boy would not be alone anymore. He would sleep in the place where he had been born. In the company of those who had shaped him, for better or worse.
Together, forever.
The shadow turned his back on the scene, the bed now a funeral pyre, the room reduced to memory. There was nothing left to do. No reason to stay. The past, with all its weight and sorrow, dissolved behind him like smoke curling into the night sky.
He descended what remained of the house, but no flame dared lick his skin. No ember marked him. He moved untouched, impervious to the destruction all around. The fire could not burn him.. Now, he was something else. Not quite a ghost, not quite a god. Just a remnant. A witness.
Out into the city he walked.
Through the quiet streets. Past lamp posts that flickered without purpose. Past empty houses and playgrounds that knew the echo of children's laughter but had long since forgotten the sound. His steps made no sound. His presence cast no shadow.
There was no destination in his mind. No path. No goal. Only motion.
And as he moved farther from that place, farther from the house and the tree and the songs that no longer played, something in him began to fray. The shape of the boy he once was began to fade. What had driven him, what had stitched his soul together, had been completed. And now…now there was nothing left to anchor him.
His steps slowed.
His limbs, though immune to fire, trembled faintly with something deeper than fatigue. The wind passed through him, as though he were already becoming less than real.
And then, under the flickering glow of a streetlight, the shadow fell.
His body, if it could still be called that, collapsed soundlessly against the cracked pavement. There was no cry. No gasp. Just stillness.
His consciousness unraveled, scattered like ash on the wind. No dreams followed. No visions. Just absence.
And so, he lay there, alone once more. But still breathing.
This is the story of the boy who only needed to love.