Chapter Three – The Cellist in the Mist

The storm rolled in just after midnight.

It didn't sneak. It announced. The wind slammed against the windows like it had fists. Rain slashed the glass in sheets. Lina's phone buzzed with a weather warning she couldn't read—the screen glitched, then died.

"No power," she muttered as the lights flickered twice and blinked out completely.

Darkness swallowed the house.

She lit two candles and placed them near the painting, which still leaned against the living room wall, untouched since the night before. The shadows made the man in the mist seem even closer than before, like he was about to step forward, one boot leaving the canvas.

Thunder cracked, and something in the attic above groaned.

Lina froze.

Then shook her head. "Old houses make old noises," she said firmly, trying to sound braver than she felt. She pulled a blanket over her legs, sat on the sofa, and listened to the rain thrum its angry rhythm against the world.

That's when she heard the knock.

A single tap on the door.

Not loud. Not desperate. Not the knock of someone in trouble. It was calm. Precise. One knock. Then another.

Lina stood slowly.

The air felt too cold. Her fingers tingled like they were waking from sleep.

Another knock.

She hesitated, then reached for the door, every nerve screaming caution.

She opened it.

A man stood on her porch, drenched from head to toe. Rain poured from his long black coat. His hair, dark and shoulder-length, was plastered to his forehead. Water slid down his jaw like it dared not touch his lips.

He was beautiful in the way old statues are—still, sculpted, almost mournful.

"I'm sorry to intrude," he said, voice low and musical. "The storm caught me off guard. I thought I might wait it out under your porch."

Lina gripped the doorframe. "Were you walking out there? At this hour?"

He nodded once. "I walk when I can't sleep."

She stared at him, uneasy. But not scared. Not exactly. There was something still about him, like he wasn't even breathing.

"You can come inside," she said, then paused. "Unless you're some kind of serial killer."

A flicker of amusement crossed his face. "Not lately."

She stepped back, just slightly.

He entered.

He moved like music. Like he didn't touch the ground so much as drift over it.

"I don't usually let strangers into my house," she said, shutting the door behind him.

"Then don't think of me as a stranger," he replied, and something about that answer made her skin prickle—not in fear, but in a kind of strange, gentle recognition

He sat in the worn armchair, dripping quietly onto the rug. She handed him a towel she found in the laundry basket. He dried his hair in silence while she relit the candles.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Adrian," he said. "Adrian Vale."

He didn't ask for hers, and she didn't offer it right away.

They sat like that for a while, just listening to the storm try to pull the roof off the house. Adrian didn't fidget, didn't tap or shift. He just was, fully present in the moment. Lina envied that.

"Do you live in town?" she asked finally.

"Not exactly. Near the woods."

"People say there are wolves out there."

"There are worse things," Adrian said softly.

Lina blinked. "Like what?"

He didn't answer. Just looked out the window, where lightning painted the trees in bright, momentary veins of white.

"Your house," he said after a moment, "has a kind of ache to it."

She raised an eyebrow. "An ache?"

He nodded. "Old places remember. They carry sorrow. Some more than others."

Lina studied him. His voice was too careful. His words were too measured. Like he'd spent decades practicing how to sound normal, and still hadn't quite gotten it right.

"Have we met before?" she asked, before she could stop herself.

Adrian tilted his head. "Not in this life."

The silence that followed should have been awkward. But it wasn't. It was… heavy. Soft. Full of unsaid things.

"You talk like a poem," she muttered.

"You listen like a wound," he said.

Lina blinked, stunned still by the truth of it.

Then, before she could respond, a sound drifted through the storm. Faint. Haunting.

A cello.

Adrian tensed.

"You hear that too?" she asked.

He stood quickly. Too quickly.

"I should go," he said.

"But the storm—"

"I'm used to storms," he said. "Thank you, Lina."

She hadn't told him her name.

He opened the door, paused in the frame. Rain painted his shoulders silver.

"Don't open the attic," he said quietly, without looking back. "Not yet."

And then he was gone, swallowed by the mist like he'd never been there at all.

Lina sat on the floor for a long time after that, trying to decide what hurt more—that he knew her name, or that she wanted to know everything about him in return.

Outside, the storm finally began to die.

But inside her, something was just beginning to wake