Detective Elara Gray never believed in fate—until the day she died.
She'd seen it all—the blood, the broken bodies, the despair. As a detective, she'd spent years chasing the truth, piecing together stories left behind by the dead. There was no room for superstition, no place for destiny in her world. Everything had an explanation. Every case had an answer.
But there was no answer for this.
It wasn't some grand, cinematic exit. No shootout. No last words whispered into a partner's ear. There was no final case, no bitter ending that would tie everything together.
It was quiet.
A flash of headlights. Brakes too late. A sharp, spine-cracking collision. Then, darkness. The kind that swallowed her whole.
When Elara woke, she was choking—her lungs desperate for air, her mouth filled with blood. Not her blood. It tasted sweet, metallic. She coughed hard, her body jerking as she struggled to breathe. Her hands scraped against cold rock, and she could feel the jagged edges biting into her skin.
She opened her eyes. The world around her spun in strange, disorienting flashes of light and dark. She was sprawled on the ground, her back pressed against something hard and uneven. The wind screamed in her ears, and her head throbbed with a fierce ache.
Her body—this body—felt foreign, as if it didn't belong to her at all.
She gasped, trying to steady herself. Her fingers trembled as she pushed herself up, her limbs uncooperative, too weak to support her.
The air smelled of salt and earth, thick with the scent of damp foliage. Her fingers brushed against the ground, feeling the crunch of leaves and dirt beneath her palm.
The cliffside. It was too close.
Her head swam as she tried to push herself upright, only to stagger. The dizziness almost took her down again, but she fought it back, breath coming in ragged gasps.
She glanced over her shoulder.
The cliff. The jagged rocks below.
Had she fallen?
She couldn't remember. Not clearly. There was a flash of something—like a dream half-remembered. A scream. A shove. The dizzying sensation of falling, of weightlessness. Then, nothing.
No.
Her chest tightened. She couldn't have fallen. She was a detective. She knew what happened when people fell from cliffs. They didn't survive.
But somehow, she was alive.
Elara forced herself to stand, the world spinning as her knees buckled beneath her. She stumbled toward a nearby stream, where the glint of water caught her eye. Her reflection shimmered in the surface, and she froze.
A girl stared back at her.
Pale skin smeared with blood, long dark hair clinging to her cheeks, brown eyes wide with shock. The girl looked… terrified. Her features delicate, soft, and unfamiliar. Seventeen. Maybe eighteen, at most.
Not her.
Elara's heart pounded in her chest, a heavy weight settling in her stomach. This wasn't her body. She didn't recognize the face, the hair, the soft curve of the lips.
Her hands shook as she reached up, running her fingers over her face. It felt real, but it couldn't be real. It couldn't be her.
Who was she?
And why was she in this girl's body?
A wave of nausea washed over her, and Elara stumbled backward, clutching at her head. The memories weren't her own. They came flooding in—disjointed flashes, like a broken film reel.
A scream. A shove. A desperate fall.
The wind was louder now, too loud. The girl had been pushed. Someone had wanted her dead.
The name Evelyn slipped through Elara's mind like a whisper, but it felt wrong, like she was hearing someone else's voice.
Evelyn.
Elara's heart skipped a beat.
No.
She shook her head, trying to clear the fog that clouded her thoughts. She was Elara Gray, not Evelyn. She was a detective—a survivor. She couldn't just become someone else. This wasn't possible.
But the girl's memories kept coming, relentless and cruel, invading her mind like shadows at dusk.
Evelyn's mother. Her father. Her best friend, Olivia. The way they'd smiled together, the way her laugh sounded—soft, sweet, like a melody.
Elara pressed her hands to her temples, fighting back the surge of emotions that didn't belong to her. But no matter how hard she tried, the memories wouldn't fade.
They were slipping away, fading like smoke through her fingers, but she could still hear the warnings. The strange feeling of something watching her. Waiting.
She tried to focus, tried to gather herself.
"Get out. They're coming."
The voice.
It wasn't hers.
Elara's breath hitched as the words echoed in her mind, the urgency in them palpable. She could feel it now—a presence. A warning. A threat that was tied to this body, to the girl she had become.
They're coming.
Her pulse quickened. She wasn't just here by accident. She had inherited this life—this girl's life. But why? And who was coming for her?
Her chest tightened.
She wasn't safe here. She couldn't stay on the cliff's edge, not with everything she didn't understand. Not with the way her body felt too alien, too broken to navigate on her own. And Evelyn's past was closing in around her like a storm.
Evelyn had been on the brink of death, but somehow, she had survived.
Now, Elara had to figure out why.
And who was going to come for her next.