Chapter One: The First Whisper

The wind howled through the hollow skeleton of the abandoned railway station, threading through the cracks in shattered windows and rusting steel beams. It carried with it something ancient, something unseen. To anyone else, it would be nothing more than the eerie breath of an empty place. But I heard more.��

The voices.��

At first, they were nothing but a murmur beneath the groan of the shifting metal roof. A whisper hidden within the hush of dead leaves skittering across the platform. Then, just as I took another step, it came clearer - low, urgent, and laced with something that made the air thicken around me.��

"He doesn't know yet? but he will."��

I stopped so suddenly that my heartbeat stuttered in my chest.��

The words were spoken so close, I could almost feel the breath of them against my ear. My fingers curled into fists, nails biting into my palms. I knew better than to turn around - spirits didn't need eyes to know when they were being watched.��

"Find it before they do."

Find what? Before who?��

My pulse drummed against my skin, the cold seeping through my jacket, through my bones. The railway station had been abandoned for nearly twenty years, left to rot like the memories it once held. Cracks ran deep through the concrete, splitting apart names carved into the wooden benches - names of lovers, of strangers, of people long forgotten.��

Forgotten.��

That word had followed me all my life, wrapping around me like a second skin.��

I exhaled slowly and forced my feet to move. If I hesitated too long, the whispers would grow impatient. The first time I ignored them, I woke up with bruises in the shape of fingers on my arm. The second time, my reflection moved when I didn't.��

The third time? I stopped trying to forget what I could hear.��

I stepped onto the platform, my boots crunching over shards of broken glass. The overhead light flickered - buzzing, struggling, like a dying firefly. Shadows stretched unnaturally long across the station floor, but one of them didn't belong to me.��

It stood at the far end of the platform. Still. Watching.��

Not a person. Not anymore.��

My breath hitched. The edges of the figure wavered, like smoke trapped in the shape of a man.��

I should have turned and walked away. I should have pretended not to see it. But I had learned a long time ago - some voices refuse to be ignored.��

And this one was calling my name.�