When Zamira came home from school, she did what she always did—
she locked herself in her room.
Her small desk was buried under stacks of books: mythology, ancient belief systems, old folk tales about spirits and djinn… stories most people forgot, stories she never stopped chasing.
She stopped at a passage and reread the lines again:
"Encounters with shadows usually occur in moments of solitude.
They are silent, but their presence changes the air in the room."
Just as her eyes traced the last word, the light in her room flickered—
faint, but enough to send a chill down her spine.
She lifted her head.
On the glass ornament beside her books, she caught her reflection.
Only… her reflection moved a heartbeat later.
"Not again…" she whispered to herself.
Her phone rang suddenly—
the abrupt sound slicing through the quiet and making her heart race.
It was her mother. She said she'd be late. Then the call ended.
Zamira inhaled deeply.
The uneasiness inside her had been growing all evening.
Though the curtains were closed, a particular corner of the room remained darker than the rest—
a pool of shadow, gathered unnaturally, as if folding in on itself.
Not a furniture shadow.
Not a curtain.
Just… a shadow.
She opened her notebook and wrote:
"Sometimes this world doesn't feel like a single layer.
A shadow, a whisper…
Am I calling them?
Or are they finding me?"
The moment she put down her pen, a sound brushed through the room—
barely a whisper, maybe just a breath of wind…
but it echoed like a word inside her ears.
That night, before falling asleep, only one thought circled her mind:
"What if something really is watching me?"
With that question lingering in the dark, she drifted into sleep—
and the world she tried to ignore continued whispering through her dreams.
---
The Next Day
She woke, went to school, and lived another ordinary day on the surface.
But when the final bell rang and she slung her bag over her shoulder, the weight in her chest returned.
At the bus stop, the world felt painfully normal—students chatting, workers tired from the day, teenagers glued to their phones.
Life moved in routine, like clockwork.
Then she saw them.
A pair of eyes, fixed on her through the crowd.
A man dressed in the deepest shade of black.
His face indistinguishable—like a blurred silhouette—
but his eyes…
she felt them down to her bones.
People flowed around him like water,
but he stood completely still,
watching her.
She blinked—once, brief, uncertain—
and he was gone.
Then a voice, thin as a whisper slipping through a crack, brushed against her ear:
"Zamira…"
She jerked her head toward the sound.
No one stood beside her—
just a few people talking among themselves.
But the voice had been close.
Too close.
She had felt its breath.
The bus screeched to a stop, pulling her back into her body.
As she stared at the bus's window, she caught her reflection again…
and behind her, a shadow.
"Who are you?" she breathed.
No answer.
The shadow dissolved.
Zamira stepped onto the bus, her pulse trembling beneath her skin.