Not all ghosts haunt from the afterlife. Some walk beside you, bring you coffee, and wait for the right moment to strike or save you.
The hallway was suffocating.
Ava turned, heart pounding, eyes scanning the shadows.
"Maya?" she whispered.
The door creaked wider.
Footsteps. Soft, deliberate.
Then she stepped out of the darkness.
Same round eyes. Same soft curls. But something in her posture had changed.
She no longer looked like an assistant.
She looked like a woman who knew secrets buried in centuries.
"Maya?" Ava tried again.
The woman gave her a small smile.
"I haven't been called that in a long time."
Ava blinked. "Then who are you?"
"I was your handmaiden, once," she said, walking slowly toward her. "In your first life. Before the name Isabella. Before Liam."
Ava took a step back. "You were… there?"
"I held your hair back when you cried. I dressed your wounds. I watched you fall in love with the one man the world said you could never have."
Ava's eyes filled. "And you were there when I died."
"Yes," Maya said. "But not as a witness."
She stopped in front of Ava.
"I was the one who tried to save you."
Flashback.
A younger woman in servant's robes crouched over Isabella's dying body.
"Don't move," she whispered, pressing her palms over the wound.
Blood pooled beneath her knees.
"Vincent will see you," Isabella gasped.
"I don't care. You weren't meant to die like this."
"I can't feel my hands…"
The servant Maya gritted her teeth and whispered a chant in a language older than any kingdom.
A faint golden glow began to wrap around Isabella's chest.
"I can slow the death," Maya said. "But I can't stop it. Not here."
"What are you doing?" Isabella whispered.
"I'm binding your soul to this world. You will come back. When the world is ready. When the time is right."
Present.
"You brought me back," Ava breathed.
Maya nodded. "I had to wait through lifetimes. I've watched every version of you rise and fall. But this is the one where you remember."
Ava's voice cracked. "Why now?"
"Because Celeste and Vincent are close," Maya said. "And this time, they want more than your death."
"They want your soul."
Liam burst through the front door, breathless. "Ava! I heard you scream"
He stopped when he saw Maya.
Maya's expression darkened.
"It's not safe here. She's marked now."
"By who?" Ava asked.
Maya turned slowly to the window and pointed to a figure across the street.
A woman in white stood under the flickering streetlight.
Long blonde hair.
Crimson lipstick.
And eyes that had not aged in a hundred years.
Celeste.