Part -1
Prologue
Finally.
The door slams shut behind me with a hollow thud. Another soul-crushing day. I kick off my shoes, ignore the cold dinner on the counter, and collapse onto the bed like a corpse finally returning to its grave.
A long, exhausted sigh escapes my lips.
"Now... I can disappear."
Reading is my only escape. The only place where reality can’t reach me.
I grab my tablet, its cold blue glow slicing through the darkness of my room. I scroll endlessly through the usual feed. Dark Romance. Dark Fantasy. Psychological Thriller. Everything feels dull. Predictable. Dead.
I am about to lock the screen when a strange link appears in the recommendations. No flashy thumbnail. Just a pitch-black background and blood-red text. The title is simple. Forgettable.
But right beneath the link, in jagged, bleeding letters: Read this story before midnight.
I check the time. 11:52 PM.
A cold shiver runs down my spine. "What kind of creepy marketing is this?"
Still… curiosity wins. I tap the link.
The screen goes black for a second, then the book cover loads. It is unsettling—dark, twisted, and far too detailed. Below the cover, the same bold message appears again: Read this story before midnight.
I open it.
At first, it seems like the usual toxic obsession romance I secretly love. The story follows Evelyn Smith, a quiet and broken girl who becomes dangerously obsessed with Lucius Knox. She stalks his every move, collects his belongings in secret, and slowly loses herself completely in him.
But Lucius is far worse.
His obsession with Diana Ross—the female lead—isn't just control; it is complete erasure. He watches her constantly, controls her life from the shadows, and eliminates anyone who dares come between them. His love is a beautiful, blood-soaked cage. Anyone who so much as looks at her ends up as nothing more than a stain in the palace’s pristine hallways.
The world itself is wrong. Broken.
The buildings wore the faces of ancient ruins, but behind their weathered stone exteriors lay blindingly modern, luxurious interiors. A high-tech prison dressed as a gothic nightmare. The characters move like puppets with cut strings—repeating the same twisted mistakes, smiling with dead eyes while something watches from the darkness.
"What the hell am I reading?" I mutter, rubbing my burning eyes.
Suddenly, the air in my room turns ice-cold. My breath hitches, pluming into a faint mist in the dark. The words on the screen begin to blur and crawl like insects, bleeding into the digital glass.
A heavy, unnatural paralysis crashes over me. My heart hammers frantically against my ribs, but my limbs refuse to obey. This isn’t normal sleep. It feels like cold, unseen hands are dragging me under a frozen lake.
My fingers go completely numb. The tablet slips from my grasp, clattering to the floor. Total darkness swallows everything.
I can’t move. I can’t scream.
Then, the mattress dips beside me. The distinct scent of expensive cologne mixed with the metallic tang of blood fills my senses.
Inches from my ear, a low, velvet-smooth voice whispers—intimate, possessive, and terrifyingly real:
"I’ve been waiting for you… Gracelynn."
