Leo sat at the edge of his bed, the silence of the suburban house feeling more like a vacuum than peace. His parents called his episodes “night terrors.” The doctors called them “vivid parasomnia.” But Leo knew the truth. Science didn’t explain why he knew the layout of a London street that had been paved over a century ago. It didn’t explain why he spoke fluent, archaic Latin in his sleep—a language he had never studied.
The memories began as flickers. A flickering candle, the taste of bitter laudanum, the sight of a man with a face like a cracked mask leaning over him. That man was the one who had buried him. Elias Thorne had been a gambler of souls, a man who thought he could cheat the Great Beyond by stitching his consciousness into the next available bloodline. But Elias had been betrayed. The entity he bargained with, a shadow known only as The Weaver, had claimed Elias’s soul before the ritual was complete.
Leo stood and walked to the mirror. He splashed cold water on his face, but as he looked up, the reflection didn’t mimic him. The reflection stood still, its eyes milky with cataracts, its jaw hanging at an unnatural angle.
“Borrowed flesh,” the reflection rasped. The voice didn’t come from the air; it vibrated inside Leo’s own teeth. “The debt is overdue, Elias.”
Leo backed away, tripping over a chair. He wasn’t Elias. He was Leo. He liked video games, he hated math, and he was terrified of the dark. But the shadow in the mirror didn’t care about his identity. To the universe, he was just a container. A jar of honey that had been stolen from a hive, and the bees were coming to reclaim it.
He noticed something on the floor. A trail of wet, black soil leading from the mirror to his feet. He hadn’t been outside. The soil was cold, smelling of ancient graveyards and chemical embalming fluid. As he watched, the soil began to move, crawling like insects toward his bare toes. He screamed, but no sound came out. His throat was filled with the taste of grave dirt.
