Blade didn't remember how it started. He only remembered how it ended.

Not in clear snapshots, not in neat order. It came to him in bursts—flashes like blood on tile, your breath caught mid-cry, your fingers trembling in his. He remembered how warm your body was when you collapsed against him, how you had whispered something soft, maybe his name, maybe just breath—and how he'd pressed his hand tighter anyway.

He remembered the way your blood moved. It wasn't like theirs. No. Theirs ran like oil, black and bitter. Yours was gold in the light. Red in shadow. A shimmering thread he could never pull from his skin. It stained his mouth. His thoughts. His dreams.

He remembered how your body twitched beneath him. How it shook when he screamed for you to stop looking at anyone else. To stop smiling for strangers. To stop letting the world hurt you when he could keep you. Forever. And then—it stopped.

Now, the days pass like rotting paper. Hours flake away at the edges, curling, brittle, collapsing under their own weight. He wanders your old haunts. Your school courtyard in the cold morning fog, where the benches still hold the ghost of your weight. The café on 8th and Liu, its windows steamed and glowing in winter light. The bookstore where you used to drag him by the sleeve, the smell of paper and dust rising like a memory in his lungs.

You're not there.

Your phone doesn't ring. Your name doesn't light up the screen. He smashes it anyway. He yells at the ceiling until his throat is raw. Tears the sheets from his bed because they still smell faintly of you. Punches the mirror until it stops reflecting your ghost standing behind him. But still—he sees you in every blink. Every breath. Even the silence has your shape.

He screams into your empty apartment. "Answer me!" he yells, voice cracked and bleeding. But silence is crueler than death. Because it listens. And agrees.

Then, one night, when his body is all twitch and tremble, when sleep has abandoned him like everyone else—he hears it.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Three soft taps at the door. Like a memory asking to come inside.

He opens it. And there you are.

No. Not you. Something shaped like you. Something wrapped in the smell of your shampoo. The slouch of your shoulders. The soft "hi" you always said like the world hadn't tried to ruin you that day.

But this thing—this beautiful, horrifying thing—tilts its head wrong. Your neck moves too loosely, too long. When you smile, your tongue flickers, wet and unfamiliar. Your eyes burn with something deeper than love.