𝐓𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐯𝐢𝐥: 𝐇𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐬 #1 | 18+

𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐛 2

𝑰𝒗𝒂 × 𝑯𝒂𝒅𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏

I dream of you finding me...
In your sanctuary of safety...
As I tear through your world-bloody, broken, and smiling just for you.

· · • • • • • • • · ·

"Iva?"
A soft knock, tender but intrusive.

She blinked, startled-her hand stilled against the page of her journal. The moonlight streamed in, illuminating her room in silvery melancholy.

"Yes, mama?" she replied.

"Come eat, darling. It's getting cold."

"Coming in a minute!" she called back, eyes trailing back to her words.

They were all about him.
The boy. The shadow. The ghost.

She didn't know his name. Didn't even see his face clearly that night-just a fleeting moment, a pair of feral eyes watching her from across the crowd, years ago.

But her soul remembered.
And her mind never let go.

She got up, padding softly across her room, her silk nightgown clinging to her frame. She stood in front of the mirror, brushing her long hair slowly, whispering to her reflection:

"If you're real, find me again."

Her eyes fluttered closed, a blush creeping up her cheeks as she imagined the whisper of his fingers tracing her throat, not tender-claiming.

What she didn't know...
Was that he already had.

Somewhere, on a cracked screen, cloaked in flickering shadows, a man watched. Silent. Starved. Dead-eyed.

His gaze was merciless. His smile, deranged.

She always looked so soft... so clean.

It made his insides ache with a fury he didn't understand.

"Still so untouched... I crave to mark you."

His fingers hovered above the screen, not touching-but trembling.

As if her image alone scorched his skin.

She wrote about love. He dreamed about ruin.

She imagined fairytales. He only wanted to watch her bleed sweetly for him.

"Do you know who I am, little cherry?" he whispered into the dark.

"Do you remember what your eyes did to me?"

He could still hear her laughter from that night, years ago-when he stumbled out of the shadows of his childhood into a world on fire, and she smiled at him like he wasn't a ghost.

She smiled.

When everyone else saw a broken boy reeking of fear and filth, she saw something else.

He never forgave her for that.
And he never forgot her either.

She touched her lips gently in the mirror, pretending it was him.

And across the city, in a dim room, drenched in the glow of obsession, he bit his knuckle, eyes dilated like a man high on agony.

"That smile is the only thing that makes me feel alive but I'll take that smile, cherry. I'll make it mine... then break it apart, one crack at a time."

She brushed her neck, shivering.

He imagined sinking his teeth there.

Not to kiss.

To mark.

Her innocence was a song he wanted to mute.

Her warmth was a fire he wanted to suffocate in.

She whispered to herself, tracing a heart in her journal,

"I wonder if you still remember me..."

Oh, he did.

"You don't get it, do you, cherry? In a world full of corpses, you're the only thing that makes my fucking blood burn."

And he was coming back with blood in his eyes and her name carved in every broken piece of his soul.

Their beginning isn't soft. It isn't sweet.

It's possession. It's memory soaked in vengeance.

And it's all tangled in the illusion of love.