The crash came fast.
One second, Noah Clarke was on a dark Chicago road, rain hissing against the windshield. The next thing a blinding light. Metal shrieked. His body snapped forward. Then it all silence.
No pain. No time. Just a strange, stretching cold.
When he opened his eyes, he wasn't on the road. He wasn't in his car. He wasn't… Noah.
He was lying in a large, canopy bed. Drapes hung around him like funeral veils. The sheets beneath him were stiff, damp, and smelled of iron. Something sticky clung to his fingers Blood.
His breathing quickened. He sat up way too fast and the world spun. A heavy weight dragged at his limbs. His skin prickled, too tight, too cold. He stumbled out of the bed and caught sight of a mirror in the corner.
The face staring back was not his own face.
It was sharper, paler. Longer black hair. A faint scar beneath one eye. Sunken cheeks. Eyes too hollow, too haunted.
Noah stumbled back from the mirror. He gripped the edge of a dresser to steady himself, but the wood was wet. He glanced down. Red stains smeared across it. More blood.
He turned toward the window. Crimson moonlight spilled through the glass like spilled wine. Outside, twisted trees clawed at the sky. Fog rolled over cracked gravestones.
A cemetery. He was in a house surrounded by the dead.
Then came the voice.
"You should not be awake yet."
It echoed not from the hallway or the room, but from within. Deep, broken. Familiar and alien all at once.
Noah clutched his chest. "What the hell…?"
The door creaked open, and in stepped a man in a long black coat. His blond hair was damp from the fog. His eyes were cold steel.
The man froze when he saw Noah.
"…Caleb?" he whispered, his voice low, almost pained.
Noah blinked. "Who?"
The man's eyes narrowed. He crossed the room slowly. Every step was heavy with restrained fury or grief.
"You don't remember me?" the man asked.
Noah shook his head. "I don't even remember me."
The man stared at him for a long time. Then said, "You're not him."
And somehow, Noah could tell this man didn't mean physically. He meant something deeper. Something… horrifying.
"I'm Matthew Grayson," the stranger said tightly. "I came to finish what we started. But now… I don't know what you are."
Noah's legs trembled. His voice barely escaped his throat.
"I think I died," he whispered. "But I woke up in another human flesh."
Matthew's hand went to his coat, where something shimmered a silver cross, carved with unfamiliar runes. His expression darkened.
"Then this house isn't just cursed," he murmured. "It's possessed."
Lightning cracked outside. The mirror behind them rippled. Just for a moment, Noah saw a second face there his own? Or someone else's?
Someone who smiled.