Chapter 1
Sin
She didn’t fall in love with boys.She fell in love with stories about them.
Dark ones. Dangerous ones. The kind where the villain always had the calmest voice and the most unsettling eyes—the kind that made danger feel like attraction.
Her room was on the upper floor of the house, connected to a balcony that led up to the terrace. Three large windows sat right above and beside her bed. She rarely closed them. She liked the air too much.
Her bed practically rested under the windows.
At night, the world outside turned quiet but never completely still. Wind moved through the curtains. Distant sounds of the street drifted up and faded.
Inside, it was just her and her phone.
Reels. Dark romance edits. Books where love always came with warning signs no one listened to.
She liked it that way.
Imagined. Controlled. Safe.
At least, that’s what she told herself.
But one night, something broke the pattern.
She was lying on her bed, scrolling through her phone, one arm resting near the open window. The curtain shifted slightly.
She looked up immediately.
No wind.
The air outside was still.
She frowned, then looked back at her screen.
A second later, her phone screen dimmed on its own.
She paused.
Then laughed softly under her breath.
“Too many edits,” she muttered.
But when she reached to adjust her blanket, her fingers brushed something cold near the edge of the bed.
Not fabric.
Not wood.
Something that shouldn’t have been there.
Her movements stopped.
Slowly, she turned her head toward the window above her bed.
The curtain moved again.
This time—clearly.
Not from wind.
From something brushing past it from the outside.
Her heartbeat slowed, not because she was calm…
but because her mind was trying to decide if what she saw was real enough to accept.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—
A faint sound.
Not inside the room.
Outside.
A soft shift. Like someone stepping carefully on the balcony above.
She sat up fully now.
The open window above her bed felt different. Heavier. Like it was no longer just a view to the outside.
She stood slowly, eyes locked on the balcony door beyond the glass.
Nothing moved again.
But the feeling didn’t leave.
It stayed.
Like the room was no longer hers alone.
And for the first time, she didn’t reach for her phone.
She just stared at the window—
waiting to see if it would happen again.
Or if it had already started.
