THE VOICE IN THE DARK

The air felt colder here.

Not the kind of cold that seeped into your skin from a winter breeze — no, this was different.

This cold was alive.

It slithered beneath her skin, curling around her bones, whispering to the marrow like it knew her name before she even said it.

Evelyn slowed, then stopped mid-step.

Her breath left her in pale plumes that clung stubbornly in the air before vanishing into the mist.

The forest here wasn’t simply dark — it drank the light, swallowing the faint silver glow of the moon until only shifting shadows remained.

Somewhere beyond the trees, past the mist that clung to the ground like a living shroud, she heard it.

Evelyn…

Her name.

Soft. Fragile.

Yet somehow it wound around her mind like a silken thread pulling her forward.

She swallowed hard and turned toward the shadow-drenched path that cut deeper into the woods.

Her heart gave a slow, deliberate thud, as though it too was pausing to listen.

“Don’t.”

Lucian’s voice came from behind her — sharp, almost too sharp. It sliced through the stillness.

She turned to him, blinking as if waking from a trance.

“You heard it?”

“I heard nothing,” he said quickly. Too quickly. His gaze flicked past her shoulder, scanning the darkness, his jaw tightening until the muscle there twitched. “Keep walking.”

But she didn’t.

She couldn’t.

Her feet felt rooted to the frozen ground, every instinct screaming both go to it and run away.

Come to me, Evelyn… please… help me…

The sound wasn’t like any voice she’d ever heard.

It didn’t echo.

It didn’t seem to exist in the space around them.

It bloomed inside her skull, warm and intimate, as if the speaker’s lips were brushing her ear.

Her chest rose and fell in shallow, quick breaths.

“I think… someone needs help,” she whispered.

Lucian was suddenly in front of her, moving faster than she could track. His hand closed around her arm — not roughly, but firmly enough that her bones protested.

His eyes glowed faintly, unnatural against the smothered darkness.

“That is not a someone,” he said, voice low and dangerous. “It’s something. And it’s calling you because it wants you.”

A shiver traced her spine, one that had nothing to do with the cold.

“Wants me for what?”

He didn’t answer. And that silence — from Lucian, who seemed to have an answer for everything — scared her more than anything else.

The mist shifted.

A subtle, sinuous movement — like the forest itself was exhaling.

Evelyn caught a flicker between the gnarled trunks. A figure stood just beyond the reach of the pale torchlight.

Tall. Slender.

Shrouded in black that bled into the shadows.

Its head tilted slowly to one side, unnaturally far, hair falling forward like a veil that concealed most of its face.

She strained to see… and then, as if sensing her attention, the woman lifted her head.

Her eyes were not black.

They were not empty.

They were something else entirely. A void that rejected light. A wrongness that made Evelyn’s stomach twist.

I’m so cold… Evelyn… warm me…

Her throat tightened.

The voice was closer now — so close she could feel its vibration in her chest.

Before she could think, Evelyn took a step toward it.

Lucian’s grip yanked her backward with a force that stole her breath.

“Don’t look at her,” he hissed. “She’s not real.”

But the cold was pressing harder against her skin now, creeping in with each heartbeat.

The voice grew sweeter, sadder — a plea that reached deep into the parts of her she didn’t know how to guard.

Her muscles trembled with the need to answer.

“I said, don’t,” Lucian snapped, tightening his hold until it almost hurt.

The woman smiled then.

It was small, delicate — almost human.

Almost.

And then Evelyn saw them.

Not the long, elegant fangs she’d imagined in nightmares. No, these were worse — teeth that didn’t belong in any mouth, too many and too sharp, as if made for tearing rather than drinking.

The mist thickened, curling upward from the forest floor, sliding over her boots like icy fingers.

“Lucian,” Evelyn breathed. “She’s—”

You can’t hide her from me forever.

The voice cut her off.

It was sharper now. Cruel. And this time it carried something else — certainty.

Lucian froze.

His eyes widened — and that was when Evelyn knew he had heard it too.

The look in his face wasn’t just fear.

It was recognition.

For the first time since she’d met him, Lucian looked like prey.

The figure didn’t move toward them, but the mist curled hungrily, stretching like it wanted to taste her. And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the woman was gone — devoured by shadow as though the forest had swallowed her whole.

But the air… the air still pulsed with her presence, thick and cloying, as if she’d left something behind.

Lucian said nothing.

Not a single word as he dragged Evelyn away from that place, his hand locked around hers like a shackle.

She didn’t resist.

But the voice followed her.

Not in the air. Not in the trees.

In her head.

Coiling inside her skull like smoke, refusing to fade.

And as the trees closed in behind them, shutting out the clearing, Evelyn realized something terrible.

The voice hadn’t sounded like a stranger.

It had sounded like herself.