Touch Me And Bleed

I stopped sleeping around the time I started seeing shadows that didn’t belong to anyone. The kind that breathed behind cupboard doors. Whispered when no one else was home. I used to think I was losing my mind.



Then I met Ardere.



She transferred in with haunted eyes and bruises she didn’t talk about. The kind of girl who didn’t touch anyone—and for good reason. Her power wasn’t fire, or flight, or anything survivable. It was grief. Weaponized. If she brushed your skin, you felt every dead thing that ever lived inside her.



Most people stayed away.



I couldn’t.



She was dangerous in a way no one understood. And I was already too hollow to care. Maybe that’s why her power didn’t break me the way it broke everyone else. Or maybe it did. Just slower.



Then the people who once stole her came back.



And the only way to stop what’s coming is to let her be taken again. To make her break loud enough that they come running.



She asked me to help her do it.



And I did.



I hurt her in ways I swore I never would.



She’s gone now.



And I don’t know if what’s left of her will ever come back.