CHAPTER 144: FORGOTTEN SOULS

The silence wasn’t empty. It was a held breath. A tension—palpable, vibrating—between the crumbling walls.

Élisa’s hand shot up, fingers pointed like blades: "We move. Now." No sound escaped her lips, but the command was clear in the whiteness of her knuckles.

They moved like a shadow split in three—boots and bare feet treading the dust with unnatural caution, avoiding unstable stones that might betray them. Eyes locked dead ahead, on the path through the ruins. Never on the silhouette. Never.

Yet Dylan’s gaze broke. Like cracking ice, it slipped despite himself toward the frame of a gaping doorway, like a torn-out tooth. There, half-swallowed by shadow: the silhouette of a child. Blurry, translucent, one hand raised as if in farewell. Frozen mid-motion. Behind, slumped against a rotted wall, the trembling form of a woman, her head tilted at an impossible angle. Other apparitions bloomed in his peripheral vision—adults caught mid-stride, elders perched on phantom chairs—all spectral, all unmoving. Not memories of the dead. Souls trapped in glass.

"It’s the Skin Thief."

Maggie’s breath hitched. Her fingers tightened around her weapon, knuckles whitening.

Élisa kept walking, her voice a blade slicing through thick air. "A creature that flays the living. Strips them whole. But the soul..." She stopped near a collapsed beam, her gaze meeting that of a ghostly man reaching for an absent tool. "...the soul stays. Wandering among the living, with no hope of peace."

Dylan couldn’t tear his eyes away from a ghostly boy crouched by a dry trough. His mouth hung open in a silent scream. "Wouldn’t it be better to kill them?" The words tasted of ash.

"It’s eternity in a cage," Maggie growled, finally daring to look. Her face had gone colorless. "No hope of release. They’re forced to wait..."

Élisa halted at the edge of the central courtyard. The silhouette sitting by the well hadn’t moved. Up close, its outlines looked runny, like ink bleeding on wet paper. "Thirty years ago," she murmured, eyes not on the figure but on the now-motionless weathervane, "an expedition hunted it. To wipe out the blight." A dry laugh escaped her. "Maybe they succeeded. Maybe these are just... echoes. Leftovers."

Dylan’s eyes returned to the well. The figure’s edges pulsed—barely. A shadow within a shadow. "Or maybe," he whispered, "it still prowls." His thumb slid along the worn hilt of his blade. "Hungry."

The tension tightened around them like a woven net. Too perfect to be trusted. Too still to feel safe. A dead hamlet... but not an empty one.

Each step toward the center stole another fraction of breath from their already dry lungs. The dust clung to their legs, to their thoughts—like a living memory refusing to be trampled.

The well loomed now before them, a black mass rimmed with silence. And the silhouette...

Still there.

Still seated.

Still... turned away.

Dylan veered off slightly, steps cautious, eyes scanning the surroundings. The specters hadn’t vanished. They were gathering. As if their transparency thickened the closer one drew to the heart of the hamlet. A trembling old man near a cracked trough. A little girl suspended in a game frozen too long ago. And that woman... standing this time. No longer crouched or crumpled. Standing. Facing them.

Her face was blurred, indistinct. But her eyes...

No. He didn’t want to see them. He turned his head quickly—but it was already too late.

A brutal, icy shiver climbed his spine.

"They’re waking up," Élisa whispered, not daring to blink.

Maggie stepped back, slowly. "Are souls supposed to... move?"

The silhouette by the well shifted.

It was minuscule, but—

Its neck.

Just... its neck.

It tilted a few degrees. A faceless silhouette was staring at them, and even without eyes, they felt its gaze press down on them.

As if something that should not have remained in the land of the living had grown fond of it... and refused to leave.

The figure didn’t move again.

But the damage was done.

That eyeless gaze had scorched the air like a burn. It lingered, suspended—invisible, but crushing. A presence pressed against their skin, their napes, the insides of their ribs.

Dylan stepped back.

So did Élisa.

Maggie didn’t even blink. Her voice rose, raspier than ever:

"Hey. We don’t belong here."

But behind them, the wind had died. The path seemed... pulled away. As if the world had shifted slightly, slid one degree off, into a reality just wrong. The landscape was the same, and yet... every detail felt subtly strange. Angles too sharp. Shadows too straight. The silence—too absolute.

Élisa frowned, tried to speak. Her mouth moved—but no sound came out.

She tried again.

Nothing.

Maggie noticed it first. She spread her arms, as if to test the air, and her lips formed a curse that didn’t reach their ears.

The silence... wasn’t silence anymore.

It was a wall.

A trap.

A barrier.

They were sealed in.

"No... no no no..." Dylan muttered, barely audible, words swallowed by supernatural static.

That’s when he saw them.

The specters.

They had come closer. Not suddenly. Not violently.

One step.

Then another.

Almost tenderly.

Like starving children inching toward the warmth of a forbidden fire.

They had no faces. Yet each of them watched. Waited.

Coveted.

Élisa spun toward Maggie. She screamed. Soundless.

Her hands signaled. Run. Now.

But the silhouette at the well had risen. Fully.

And in the air between them, something bent. Crumpled.

Like a page tearing in a book too old to hold itself together.

The hamlet... was collapsing. Slowly. Not physically—but in its rules.

Time warped. Lines stretched. The specters accelerated without moving faster. As if the space between each step shrank by itself.

Élisa’s hands trembled as if she had suddenly been struck by cold.

"These souls were ripped from their bodies. Now, they’re looking for a new shell. A refuge. They can sense us. They recognize us as... possibilities."

The silhouette by the well was now upright.

Not standing.

Raised.

Like a puppet whose strings had been yanked violently upward. Its head tilted at an unnatural angle, its body flickering faintly, as if seen through flame.

The specters were advancing. Slowly. Far too slowly to be reassuring. Each step seemed to take hours, and yet the distance between them was shrinking at an impossible rate.

Maggie stepped back, nearly bumping into Dylan. Her lips formed a word: Run.

But their legs refused to move.

As if the ground itself held them.

As if the air had hardened around them.