When Elowen opened her eyes, the world had turned to ink. The kind of black that seeps through your skin, like grief you've stopped trying to name. Outside the window, the rain poured not like a blessing, but like the sky had given up pretending it could hold anything in. It was 3:00 PM according to her watch, but everything outside whispered otherwise.
She scanned the bus again. Still empty. Still too quiet. But this time, something was different. The driver's seat sat hollow, like even he had decided she wasn't worth the ride anymore.
"Maybe he stepped out," she murmured, even though no one was there to hear her, "maybe for a smoke..." Her voice fell flat against the bus walls, and she suddenly hated how lonely it sounded.
She straightened her posture the way people do when they're trying not to panic, clutching her suitcase as though it might anchor her to reality. "I'll wait," she said, louder now, as if declaring things made them true. "Just a few minutes. If he doesn't come back… I'll go check."
Five minutes passed.
Then eight.
Then seventeen.
By thirty, the silence had started to itch beneath her skin.
"It's been thirty minutes," she whispered to her watch like it was a confidant. The rain had softened, like even it was waiting for what would happen next. She leaned toward the window. That's when she saw it: a bus stop, barely standing, the kind of thing that had forgotten it used to serve a purpose.
"Is this… my stop?"
The words tasted uncertain as she stood up, umbrella in hand, suitcase at her side. She stepped out, and the wind greeted her like a ghost.
She looked around for a sign, a name, a clue. Nothing. Not even a scribble left by a bored teenager. Just the broken bones of a forgotten bus stop and a flickering light that looked like it was dying for company. She turned back to the bus.
And froze.
The bus was gone.
Not "gone" like it had driven off. Gone like it had never been there in the first place. The space it once filled stood hollow, untouched, and impossibly still. No tire marks. No engine sounds. No goodbye.
She blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Turned around.
Then again.
Still no bus.
"No… no, that's impossible," she stammered, more to herself than to the wind. "It was just here. It had to be. I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't." Her voice cracked like the sky above her. She spun around again as if sheer willpower could summon something that had chosen to leave.
Panic threatened to crawl its way up her throat, but she swallowed it down, hard. "Maybe… maybe this is my stop. Maybe the driver left because… because I was meant to get off here…" The words felt flimsy, like paper in a storm. "I just didn't hear it leave. I must've been so distracted."
But even she didn't believe herself.
Rain began to pour again, harder this time. Reluctantly, she stumbled back under the frail roof of the bus stop, seeking shelter in its skeleton.
"It's okay…" she whispered. "It's okay. I'm overthinking. I always do." But even the wind didn't seem convinced.
So she hummed.
A soft, lullaby-like sound she used to sing when the younger kids at the orphanage couldn't sleep. A tune that once made nightmares dissolve. The sound of someone pretending they still believed in safety.
"Hmmm… hmmm… hmm…"
For a moment, it helped. Like pressing a hand to a bleeding wound and pretending it's enough. She closed her eyes. The rain dulled. The world dimmed. Only the hum and her own heartbeat filled the space.
"Hmmm… hmm… hm…"
And then, silence.
Not the kind that soothes.
The kind that warns.
As if the world had leaned in, holding its breath, waiting to see what she would do next.
She hummed until even the silence grew tired of waiting with her. The rain had stilled into a soft drizzle, like the sky was too exhausted to cry properly.
That's when she heard it.
Faint music.
A distant swell of violins and cellos, rising and falling like waves breaking on the shore of another world. A haunting, elegant kind of sound—the kind that wraps around your ribs and pulls, not painfully, like longing, if longing had strings.
She stood, slowly. Her legs wobbled, unsure. Her fingers clutched the suitcase tighter, the umbrella nearly forgotten in her other hand. She turned her head in the direction of the sound. Beyond the fog. Beyond the rain.
There.
A glow.
Dim at first, like a candle caught between dying and burning brighter. Then stronger. Golden. Shimmering. Not like sunlight, no—this was softer, warmer, like the kind of light dreams are made of. It flickered through the mist, drawing her in like a flame to a moth who had forgotten why fire was dangerous in the first place.
Her feet moved before she told them to.
Each step was quiet. Each breath was loud. The world felt like it was holding itself still, just for her. Even the wind had stopped to listen.
And then, through the curtain of rain and time and something she couldn't name, it appeared.
The theater.
Tall and towering, like it had been built not with bricks but with stories. With secrets. With every wish whispered into a pillow and every regret buried beneath a stage light. The sign above the grand arched gates spelled out its name in ornate and decaying gold:
EVERSHADE.
As if the word itself held weight. As if it had lived longer than any map could chart. As if it had always existed, waiting for someone like her to find it.
She didn't think. She couldn't.
The music grew louder now. Louder and lonelier and lovelier. The kind of sound that fills the hollows in your chest and plants roots there. The kind that knows your name even if you don't remember it.
She stepped closer.
The massive iron gates stood closed, vines twisting like veins up their frame. Then—without a touch, they creaked open on their own. The sound was slow, deliberate, like the gates were waking up just for her.
A voice followed. Low.
"You've been casted."
And the world tilted.
Her knees buckled. The music swelled—strings shivering, drums trembling, a piano note pressed like a bruise.
Then—
Darkness.
She collapsed just outside the threshold of Evershade, the gates yawning wider as if to cradle her fall.
The rain began again.
But this time, it didn't touch her.
Not a single drop.