Diary Entry: The shadow darkens

The path to the observation room was longer than Edward had remembered. Each step pained his ribs, not from injury, but from lingering ache for sleepless nights, the ghost fever under his skin, and the constant pressure. He moved like a man carrying a weight others could not see.

With him, Kyle swiped his badge and punched in a security code. The door creaked open on an antiseptic hiss. They entered a sealed observation vestibule that overlooked the recovery chamber through bulletproof one-way glass.

"He woke up from sedation at 3:20 a.m.," Kyle reported, his voice clipped with clinical urgency. "No panic, no screaming. Just… staring."

Edward did catch it. The man on the bed, his gauntness and pallor not yet truly regained, but decidedly awake. His head cocked a fraction towards the mirror, eyes glaring into it. At Edward, however, though he could have had no conceivable way of knowing anyone was behind it.

"No name on file," Kyle continued. "No ID. Found unconscious in a rural farmhouse on the outskirts of one of the old quarantine zones. His bloodwork's clean—entirely unremarkable. But he just keeps whispering."

Edward's gut curled up. He did not want to go in. His very cells were screaming at him to be cautious.

But he opened the door.

The air inside the recovery room was heavy. Not hot, but heavy. Like being inside an enclosed space just before the lightning storm lances it wide apart. Edward walked in cautiously, the door shutting behind him with a gentle hiss that felt too final.

The man on the bed blinked slowly. Then turned his head full around in Edward's direction.

".You came," he whispered. His voice was threadbare, papery, like dry paper rustled together.

Edward stood at the foot of the bed. "Do you. recognize me?"

"I feel you," the man said. "Like a storm across skin."

Edward caught his breath. "What is your name?"

The man blinked. "Eli. Maybe. It's hard to remember. Things keep moving. Slipping."

A shiver went through his hand. Not a shudder—more of a flicker of something under the skin, like a ripple in still water.

Edward crept closer.

"I dreamed of fire," Eli whispered. "Heated without fire. Like boiling blood. And in it, your face. You were screaming."

Edward's eyes widened.

"But not from your mouth," Eli continued. "From inside. The thing in your bones was screaming out of you."

The Shadow Man shifted.

Let's go. Now.

Edward waved it aside. "What did it say?"

Eli glared around him—no, through him. "Nothing. Just howled. And all who heard it wanted to run after it."

Edward's mouth was dry. "How do you know? You've never met me."

Eli's smile opened a crack. "Things leak between minds. Especially when they're… incomplete."

Then Eli's shape jerked.

Not fiercely—rhythmically. As a muscle thudding to an unheard beat. His back arched slightly, his hand convulsed towards Edward before falling limp again.

Monitors began to beep. Oxygen saturation: rising. Heart rate: too regular.

"Eli—can you hear me?"

The man's breathing slowed, stretched, grew coarse. His chest rose in slow, forced increments.

"I saw what you bear," Eli rasped. "It has roots. They're in you. But they're looking for soil."

Edward took a step back.

He's syncing, the Shadow Man warned. My signal is bleeding. He's amplifying it. You're too close.

"What the hell is syncing?" Edward whispered under his breath.

Not a virus. A pattern. An infection of identity. It's echoing from you—resonating in him.

Eli's eyes snapped open wider. His pupils had dilated so much that the irises were nearly gone. His face contorted into a grin that was both terrifying and eerily childlike.

"It's waking," he whispered.

Then his voice changed.

Still his vocal cords—but as if something deeper had climbed up his throat to speak. Gravel, wet ash, and glass—like a throat never meant for speech was mimicking human sound.

"It remembers you, Edward. You're the first gate. The first mouth."

Edward stumbled back, heart hammering.

Eli's skin glistened—not sweat, not oil—just a momentary shimmer like heat over asphalt.

His fingers twitched again. Then flexed.

Hard.

The blanket twisted beneath his hand like it had bones.

Edward lunged for the emergency button. "Kyle! He's changing—now!"

But Eli's arm snapped outward and grabbed Edward's wrist with a jolt of unnatural speed. The contact was electric. A sharp spike of knowing—like touching live wire.

"You'll be there, won't you?" Eli whispered, eyes wild. "When it rises? When the hollow ones call back the first shape?"

Edward yanked his arm out of its hold, gasping, stumbling into the corner of the room. Kyle came in with two security guards and a nurse with a sedative injector.

They didn't have to struggle.

Eli fell back. Passively. His smile relaxed into one that was reflective.

"You wear your mask so well," he whispered, eyes shutting. "But you already know… don't you?"

Edward watched as the sedative pulled him into unconsciousness. But just before his eyelids shut completely, Eli locked eyes with him one last time.

"I dreamed of the Shadow Man," he breathed. "He wore your face."

Then he was out cold.

Edward stood outside the room, breathing hard, staring at the imprint of Eli's fingers around his wrist.

Kyle was pale. "He was stable. He was lucid. What the hell was that?"

Edward slowly shook his head. "I don't know. But I think whatever is in me… it's contagious."

Kyle's face was white with horror. "But there is no infection. Not on any test. His blood's clean."

Edward's voice dropped to a whisper. "Then perhaps it's not something you can look at."

Hush, behind his ribs, the Shadow Man whispered, not with voice, but straight into Edward's mind:

This is the start. You are the tuning fork. And they're beginning to resonate.