“It is not the body that bears the flame… but the breath that carries it.”

  – Unknown Scripture, Verse 1

  Aleesha’s house feels wrong.

  Not haunted. Not heavy. Just… off.

  The kind of quiet that doesn’t rest. It watches.

  Max stands in the lounge, surrounded by dusty drapes, flickering light, and something unseen pressing against her soul like steam on glass.

  Then—

  A jolt. A whisper. A tug behind her navel.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  The room tilts.

  And her body falls backward while her spirit moves forward.

  Detached. Ethereal. Whole.

  Max doesn’t gasp or scream. She simply exists now, beyond the breath.

  Outside her body, the world pulses differently. Colors blur. Sounds echo twice. Aleesha sits in the next room, unaware. But Max sees the darkness rising through the walls like oil.

  The spirits are not shapeless this time.

  They slither.

  They grow.

  One steps forward—too tall, too gaunt, its mouth full of stolen names.

  “You do not belong here,” it says.

  Max lifts her hands. No weapons. No glyphs. But something old answers inside her.

  A flicker of light behind her ribs.

  A phrase she doesn’t remember learning.

  “By breath, I bind. By light, I burn.”

  The spirit halts.

  The room breathes.

  And Max—between soul and flesh—begins to understand that something sacred is waking inside her.

  She doesn’t know the scripture lives yet.

  But the spirit does.