Rain hammered against the cracked glass, each drop a sharp tattoo echoing inside Elara’s skull. The storm outside was relentless—an angry beast roaring through the night—but inside, the silence was worse. Her breath came shallow and uneven, a feeble pulse in the empty room.

The door slammed shut behind Riven. The sound reverberated off the peeling walls, a slammed verdict that sealed her alone with the void he’d left behind.

Elara’s fingers trembled, tracing trembling arcs over the cold fucking floor. The electric hum of the neon sign outside pulsed through the thin pane, casting unnatural streaks of blue and red onto the cracked linoleum. She blinked hard. The storm’s chill fogged the glass, blurring the reflected face that flickered like a ghost.

She swallowed hard, the sour burn crawling up her throat. The question still clawed at her: Why me?

A shadow flickered at the edge of her vision.

Her heart stuttered.

She hadn’t heard anyone else enter.

No. It was... memory—fractured, fragile.

A sudden flash sifted through her mind like a shard of broken glass.

Dark corridors swarmed with blinking consoles.

Distant echoes—footsteps, hurried whispers, the hiss of static.

A hand, gloved and steady, pressing a cold metallic object into her palm—a small data shard etched with symbols she barely recognized but somehow understood.

Her breath hitched.

She forced herself to lean against the wall, steadying the swirling haze.

A sudden image—brief and blistering—flooded her skull.

She was running. Rain sluiced down her back, soaked through torn fabric. Sirens cried out in the distance, sharp and urgent. Her lungs burned. Neon signs fractured through the downpour—advertisements flickering promises she couldn’t trust anymore.

“Don’t stop. They’re coming.”

A voice.

Whose? Echoing. Familiar yet distant, like a half-remembered dream.

She clenched her jaw as the images snapped–cutting like errant film strips.

In the next fragment, she stood in a shadowed alley. Fingers traced a tattoo—a black serpent coiling around a dagger—etched along her forearm in ink that still pulsed faintly beneath her skin.

Her heart knew that symbol—it was hers.

Another flash.

A door. Eyes watching. Whispered sweet lies threaded with threats.

Suddenly, steel.

Pain. Blood.

And then—

Nothing.

The storm outside intensified. Thunder grumbled low and threatening, rolling through the city’s veins like a warning.

Elara gritted her teeth, fighting the vertigo creeping through her senses.

She staggered toward the cracked mirror by the door, catching her reflection again. The woman staring back seemed a stranger—yet a flicker stirred behind those glassy eyes.

Then—a name burst free from the storm-swept darkness of her mind.

“Dorian Voss.”

She tasted the syllables on her tongue, sour and sharp as bile.

Dorian Voss.

Somewhere beneath the rain, the name throbbed like a sinister heartbeat.

Her pulse quickened—not just from memory, but from fear.

From the shadows just beyond the cracked door, a voice cracked the night air—low, icy.

“Dorian Voss,” it repeated, slow and deliberate.

Elara froze.

The syllables floated closer, carried beneath the rain.

She scanned the room—the dim shape leaning in the doorway, silhouette fractured by neon light and rain streaks.

Eyes locked with hers—calm, calculating, and far too familiar.

The storm wasn’t just outside anymore.

It was here.

Inside.

Waiting.

And the name Dorian Voss wasn’t just a ghost in her shattered mind—it was a warning.

Her past drowning up to pull her under, fragment by fragment.

The door creaked open wider.

And then—

“Time’s up, Elara.”