Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Man With Flickering Shadows

The next day,

The lights in the hospital hallway dimmed again, not all at once, but in a peculiar wave, like shadows brushing against glass. Fluorescent bulbs buzzed with dissonant rhythm, and the air took on a coppery chill, as though something unseen had briefly passed through the walls. Most dismissed it as faulty wiring. But Evangeline Cross felt the truth settle into her skin like frost.

He had arrived.

Elias Vaughn moved through the west wing of St. Mercia’s Neurological Institute like a storm in formal wear. His black coat cut a clean silhouette against the sterile walls, but the wrongness in his presence wasn’t in his clothes or gait - it was in the way the atmosphere around him twisted, charged, then recoiled.

Something about him was... off; not overtly unnatural. Just subtly misaligned with the rules of the world.

Evangeline noticed the tremble in her nurse’s hand when she handed over the intake form. She noticed the way people avoided meeting his eyes. And she noticed, mos