Ellaya

The courtroom suffocated beneath a silence thick as tar.

Buzzing fluorescent lights cast long, warped shadows that bled across the marble floor. The air felt off—wrong. Like something breathing just beneath the surface.

Ellaya Stone stood center stage. Still. Too still.

Her spine straight. Her chin raised.

A portrait of defiance carved in ice.

Then she spoke—

"I plead guilty."

The words didn't just echo.

They cracked.

Shattered.

Splintered like glass, echoing in fragments that didn’t belong to this reality.

The judge blinked, slowly—his expression unreadable. But his voice, when it came, scraped across the room like rusted metal.

“Ms. Stone, are you certain you wish to say nothing in your defense?”

Her lips curved. Not warmth. Not surrender. Something colder.

Something final.

"I accept responsibility for all my crimes."

But beneath her voice, something else whispered.

I poisoned him. I betrayed him. I destroyed him.

Iden jolted, his breath catching mid-chest.

The gavel trembled in the judge’s hand. Wood twisting. Groaning. Stretching into sinew.

His eyes widened. No—his soul widened. Something slipped through the cracks.

Crack.

The gavel struck.

The courtroom fractured.

Walls peeled back like rotten paint. Floors crumbled. The lights fizzed and screamed.

Officers approached—but their limbs bent wrong, angles that defied biology.

The cuffs clicked around Ellaya’s wrists, gleaming like molten silver.

She turned once. Only once.

Locked eyes with Iden.

And smiled.

"You’ve won the battle…"

Her voice echoed as the floor dropped beneath her.

"But I’ve won the war."

He screamed her name.

"Laaya—"

But it was too late.

The void swallowed her.

---

He awoke with a gasp.

Iden's chest heaved under the weight of a dream too familiar to forget.

Sweat clung to his skin like second breath. The sheets twisted around him like restraints.

His hand trembled as he lit a cigarette. The flame flickered—then died.

He didn’t try again. Just sat in the dark, breathing smoke and ghosts.

Four years.

Four years since she disappeared—since she confessed to crimes she didn’t commit.

Since he let her walk into hell alone.

Except—she hadn’t disappeared. Not from him.

She haunted him like a song with no lyrics.

And tonight... he could hear it.

A soft humming, somewhere far off. Almost sweet. Almost cruel.

---

Elsewhere...

A back alley pulsed with the stink of blood and ash.

Men groaned beneath broken ribs and shattered teeth, crawling like insects over wet concrete.

She leaned against the wall, cigarette glowing at her lips.

One boot tapped a rhythm against the pavement.

Not a warning. A countdown.

Smoke curled upward.

"Tell him I’m back," Ellaya murmured.

Then she vanished—like a ghost stepping between shadows.

---

The house hadn’t changed. But he had.

Iden stood outside the gate, staring up at the place they once called home.

The scent of gardenias still clung to the breeze. Somewhere, a wind chime cried out.

He unlocked the door slowly, as if opening it would summon the past.

It nearly did.

The house exhaled.

Inside, dust whispered across the floor.

But beneath it, something else stirred.

He stepped through.

Each footfall an echo. Each echo a memory.

Then he heard it again.

That humming.

Soft. Lulling. Maddening.

"Laaya…?" he whispered.

It guided him, like a thread unraveling through silence. Up the stairs. Through the dark.

Then—

He stopped.

A figure stood by the fireplace.

Unmoving.

Unreal.

Impossible.

Ellaya Stone.

Backlit by the portrait of their wedding, her face turned away. Her dress dusty with ash.

Iden’s throat closed.

“Ellaya…”

She turned slowly.

Not surprised. Not afraid.

Her eyes held a storm.

Then she smiled.

And hummed the last line of their wedding song.