2

She was beautiful in a way that didn’t seem real.

Her skin pale as moonlight, her hair long and dark, cascading over her bare shoulders.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t speak.

My body reacted before my mind could catch up, that same, uncontrollable pull toward her.

She didn’t touch me.

Not yet.

But I felt her all the same, her presence sliding over me like a lover’s caress.

The air thickened around us, heavy with something dangerous.

My pulse quickened, and I hated myself for it.

This was wrong.

So wrong.

But I wanted her.

God, did I want her.

“Nina,” I whispered, the name foreign on my tongue.

Her smile sent a shiver down my spine.

She moved closer, close enough that I could feel the cold radiating from her, sinking into my skin.

Her lips hovered just inches from mine, but she didn’t kiss me.

She didn’t need to.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Elias,” she whispered, her voice like silk, wrapping around my mind, pulling me under.

Nina

His heart races.

I can hear it, feel it in the air between us.

He wants me.

They all do, in the end.

But this one... he’s already closer to the edge than the others.

He’s already teetering, already bending to my will, whether he realizes it or not.

I don’t touch him yet.

Not physically.

No, that comes later.

For now, I let my presence surround him, seep into his thoughts, his skin.

I know he can feel it, the way I brush against him, an invisible hand dragging over his chest, his throat, his lips.

His breath catches, his pulse quickens, and I smile.

He’s mine.

“You want me,” I whisper.

It’s not a question.

It never is.

They always want me, and they always fall.

But with him...

I’ll make it last.

He doesn’t answer, but I see it in his eyes, the war he’s waging with himself.

Fear and desire, tangled together, impossible to separate.

That’s how I like it.

I step closer, close enough that he could reach out and touch me, if he dared.

But he doesn’t.

Not yet.

Instead, I watch him squirm, his need growing, his resistance fading.

He’s so close to breaking.

And when he does, I’ll be there to catch him.

Elias

She doesn’t need to touch me.

I already feel her all over me, like a drug I can’t quit.

My heart pounds in my chest, every rational thought screaming at me to run, to get out of this place before it’s too late.

But I can’t.

I’m frozen.

Her voice slides over me like velvet, seductive and dark.

I know I shouldn’t want her, shouldn’t crave whatever twisted thing she’s offering, but I do.

God help me, I do.

“Nina,” I breathe, her name slipping from my lips like a confession.

She smiles, a wicked, knowing smile, and I know—deep down, I know—I’m already lost.

1

ELIAS

I’ve been to places like this before.

Old, crumbling buildings with a past, a reputation, always soaked in ghost stories and urban legends.

But nothing ever comes of them.

Shadows playing tricks on people, wind howling through cracks in the walls, shifting floors groaning under the weight of decades of neglect.

That’s all they are.

Empty shells, filled only with fear.

This asylum would be no different.

I pulled the van up to the entrance, my headlights cutting through the dense fog that had settled over the area.

The asylum loomed in front of me, its jagged silhouette sharp against the pale light of the moon.

Broken windows, vines crawling up the walls, the door hanging off its hinges as if the place itself were barely holding together.

It looked every bit the haunted house people whispered about.

The stories I’d read were always the same: screams heard late at night, figures seen moving through the broken halls, the cold touch of something that wasn’t there.

Nonsense.

All of it.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

There was a weight in the air, something thick and heavy pressing down on my chest as I stepped out of the van.

The wind was silent, too silent, and even though I was alone, I felt like I was being watched.