Prologue:

The smell of rain lingered in the air, damp and metallic, as the small lecture hall fell silent. A storm had swept through Ravenswood that afternoon, drenching the campus in a heavy, suffocating gloom. The sky outside was a canvas of dark clouds, their edges tinged with the last dying light of the day. The windows rattled occasionally with gusts of wind, and inside, the low hum of whispered conversations faded as Dr. Elliot Thompson stepped to the front of the room. His fingers gripped the edges of the podium, knuckles white, as if anchoring himself against the tension that filled the space.

He glanced over the rows of faces before him—students shifting in their seats, notebooks open but forgotten. They looked at him expectantly, waiting for the lecture to begin. But Elliot's attention wasn't on them. His gaze was drawn to a single figure in the back, leaning casually against the wall: Dr. Henry Lee.

Henry hadn't changed since they'd last crossed paths. That same maddeningly confident smirk rested on his lips, the one that always seemed to suggest he was five steps ahead of everyone else in the room. His dark hair fell loosely over his forehead, damp from the rain, and his sharp, calculating eyes gleamed in the dim light as they locked onto Elliot's.

The air between them felt thick, heavy with the weight of everything that had been left unsaid. Their rivalry, once merely an undercurrent of competition during their medical school days, had become a constant, oppressive presence, evolving into something much more tangled. They had spent years circling each other, locked in a battle of intellects, pushing each other in ways neither could fully explain. What had begun as a quest for superiority had twisted into an unspoken connection, a dangerous entanglement of emotions Elliot refused to name.

And now, after months of silence, Henry was here. Watching.

Elliot's stomach twisted as he tried to focus on the task at hand. He cleared his throat, scanning his lecture notes, but the words blurred together on the page. His thoughts kept drifting back to Henry, to the countless debates they'd had, the private conversations charged with an intensity that often left him shaken long after they ended. He remembered the way Henry would smile in those moments, as though he knew something Elliot didn't.

Tonight, however, something about the air between them felt different. Darker. There was an electricity in the room, an undercurrent of something lurking just beneath the surface.

Elliot began the lecture, his voice steady but distant, words spilling from his mouth almost mechanically. He couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, the weight of Henry's gaze pressing into him from the back of the room. He glanced up briefly, catching sight of Henry's figure. Henry hadn't moved, still leaning against the wall with an easy nonchalance. But his smirk was gone, replaced by a subtle, unreadable expression.

Elliot's heart quickened. His hands tightened on the podium, knuckles stark against the wood. Focus, he told himself, but it was always like this whenever Henry was near—an invisible thread pulling at his thoughts, dragging him back into old memories. Their rivalry, their debates, their closeness, all of it twisted together, blurring the line between competition and something deeper, something Elliot wasn't ready to confront.

Outside, the storm rumbled softly, the sound of distant thunder vibrating through the walls. The dim lighting flickered briefly, casting long shadows across the room. The students were scribbling notes, but their faces had blurred into the background noise of his mind. He felt as if he were slipping, falling away from the present moment, sinking into the familiar anxiety that had been gnawing at him for weeks now.

Something wasn't right.

He hadn't seen Henry in months. Not since their last bitter confrontation—an argument that had ended in tense silence, neither willing to yield. But there had been something in Henry's expression that day, something haunted, like a man on the edge of a precipice.

Elliot's eyes flickered back to the rear of the room. Henry still hadn't moved, but his face had changed. For a fleeting moment, Elliot thought he looked pale, almost sickly, as though the storm outside had bled the color from his skin. The thought passed quickly, but the sense of dread remained, cold and insistent.

"Dr. Thompson?"

The voice snapped him back to the present. One of the students in the front row had raised a hand, their question hanging in the air. Elliot blinked, his mouth suddenly dry, the focus on him unsettling. He opened his mouth to respond, but the words faltered on his tongue as the room seemed to shift around him, the air growing heavier, pressing in from all sides.

And then he heard it—a dull, rhythmic sound.

Tap… tap… tap.

It was faint at first, almost imperceptible, but it grew louder, more insistent. The noise seemed to echo off the walls, a steady beat that pulsed through the room, sinking into Elliot's bones. His heart quickened. He scanned the room, searching for the source, but the students were still, oblivious, lost in their notebooks.

His eyes landed on Henry.

Henry stood perfectly still, his gaze locked on Elliot with a cold intensity. His arms were crossed over his chest, but his hand—the fingers of his right hand—were tapping, slowly and deliberately, against the sleeve of his coat.

Tap… tap… tap.

It wasn't random. The rhythm was too deliberate, too precise. Each beat seemed to reverberate inside Elliot, swelling into something cold and heavy that settled deep in his gut. His pulse quickened, the tapping growing louder in his ears, drowning out the distant thunder and the soft whispers of the students around him.

Henry's expression hadn't changed, but there was something wrong about his stillness, something unnatural in the way he stood there, watching. The room felt smaller, the air thick with tension. Elliot could barely breathe, his chest tightening with a growing sense of panic. The edges of his vision blurred, and all he could hear was the relentless tapping.

Tap… tap… tap.

He wanted to look away, to break the connection between them, but he couldn't. Henry's eyes bore into him, unblinking, as if trying to tell him something, as if the tapping itself was a message only Elliot could hear.

A cold shiver crawled down Elliot's spine. His throat tightened, and for the first time in a long while, he felt truly afraid—not of Henry, but of something else. Something darker.

And then, without warning, the tapping stopped.

Henry lowered his hand, his expression blank and unreadable. For a long moment, neither of them moved. The room was silent, the storm outside momentarily forgotten. And then, as if nothing had happened, Henry turned and walked out of the room, his footsteps echoing faintly in the hallway beyond.

Elliot stood frozen behind the podium, his heart hammering in his chest, the silence of the room pressing in on him from all sides. The students were still watching him, waiting, but Elliot's mind was miles away, tangled in the strange moment he had just shared with Henry. He felt as though he had just witnessed something he wasn't supposed to see, something that had slipped between the cracks of reality.

He didn't know it then, but that was the night everything began to change.

Outside, the storm resumed, its thunder rolling in waves over Ravenswood, as if the sky itself were restless. Inside, Elliot remained at the front of the room, staring at the empty space where Henry had stood moments before, a single thought running through his mind:

What was he trying to tell me?

Over the next few weeks, Elliot would try to push the memory from his mind, convincing himself that it had been nothing more than a strange coincidence—a trick of the light, a brief hallucination born from stress. But no matter how hard he tried, the cold, creeping dread that had settled in his chest that night wouldn't leave him. It lingered, clinging to the edges of his thoughts, growing louder with each passing day.