Chapter Two — The Wolf in the Glass

The rain had tapered off to a drizzle by the time I reached my apartment building, but the air still had that heavy, metallic scent that comes after a storm. Water dropped from the awning above the front door in slow, measured drops that seemed nearly deliberate.

My boots puddled in the shallow water, each step ringing softly in the empty street. The lights of the city lay in the water like copper and gold ribbons, undulating whenever the wind whispered.

I inserted my key into the lock, but something moved—no, not in front of me, but in the reflection on my door's glass panel.

A figure.

Tall. Still. Just far enough away that I couldn't make out the features, but close enough that the air between us hummed with awareness, like a tight wire.

My heart missed a beat. I spun around—

Nothing.

Only the empty street, the gleam of wet asphalt, and the gentle whisper of wind through the narrow alley to my left.

But the hairs on the nape of my neck continued to stand on end, prickling against my skin. There was something unseen that was observing me. I felt it—like a presence seated just behind my shoulder, waiting for me to take note.

Inside, my apartment greeted me with the faint scent of turpentine and damp wool. My unfinished canvases leaned against the far wall, silent witnesses to too many sleepless nights. I dropped my satchel onto the divan, hesitating before locking my door.

The window called.

I pulled the curtain back and peered down into the street. Rain dampened the pavement, and the world was a distorting mirror. The streetlights glowed soft gold, blurry in the mist, but there was nobody. Not anymore.

I told myself I had to go to bed, that I was hallucinating. But sleep was absurd—how could I sleep when my heart still pounded, when my hands still trembled slightly?

So I painted.

I took my heavy canvas from the stack and set it in the center of the room. The painting had started weeks ago as an abandoned train station, the kind that smells of rust and wasted hours. But tonight my brush moved with otherworldly assurance.

I wasn't painting the station now.

I was painting him.

At first, I could not make myself accept it, but when the lines sharpened further, the truth infiltrated like ink in water. I had seen that shape before—not here in the city, not in life—but in drawings I made when I was seventeen. I thought then he was a product of my frazzled mind: a man with storm cloud eyes, a figure that could silence a room without a word.

Now, he was real.

And worse, he'd been behind me tonight.

The wind crashed against the window hard enough to make me start. The lamps flickered once, twice… then died, leaving the room in darkness.

"Great," I muttered under my breath, groping for my phone. The soft blue light of the screen lit up my hands, the table next to me, and nothing else.

And that's when I saw them.

Two eyes—glowing dimly—floating in the corner of my living room.

My lungs wouldn't work. My hand tightened on the phone.

The eyes didn't blink.

A voice growled out of the darkness, low and rough, like gravel being dragged under velvet.

"You shouldn't walk home alone at night."

I was frozen. Couldn't look away. The shadows around him seemed to be alive, writhing and curling to keep him partially hidden.

"Who are you?" My voice was a whisper, thin and uncertain.

He moved into the weak spill of my phone's light, and my breath hitched. His face was too finely angled to be human—cheekbones like chiseled marble, a jaw constructed for determination as much as menace. His hair was black, wet from the rain, and his suit was tailored to fit him like it had been sewn on.

Yet his eyes were what pinned me to the earth. They were not just grey. They were the silver of a sword ready to strike.

"You don't remember me," he stated, in a voice that appeared to be offended at the suggestion.

"I've never met you," I managed to say, though my heart was a wild, pounding drum.

"Not in this lifetime," he murmured. The way he said it, I felt as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking into something endless.

I had waited too long to ask him more questions. The emergency lights whirred to life. The room was bathed in faint yellow light.

He was gone.

No footsteps. No door creaking open. Just gone.

The only clue he'd been there was the lingering scent of rain… and something else. Something wilder—pine needles crushed underfoot, smoke carried on a distant fire, and the faint metallic whisper of danger.

I fell onto the couch without meaning to, my knees suddenly weak. My mind replayed every moment of his presence, every tone of his voice, over and over.

I didn't sleep that night. Not because I didn't want to, but because every creak of the old pipes, every groan of the building, sounded like footsteps outside my door.

By morning, I'd talked myself into believing I had imagined it. That I'd been tired, nervous from the rain. That I'd hallucinated.

Almost talked myself into it.

Because when I finally turned to face the canvas I'd left behind, my stomach dropped.

The shape I had been painting was finished. Each line perfect. Each shadow deliberate.

And I had not touched a brush since the lights went out.