Fog comes in like a promise. Low and slow, like a ghost with secrets. I open my eyes beneath cedar roots and breathe in the earth like it’s an old lover. Cold. Damp. Sweet with rot.

There are no clocks here. Only tides.

I move quiet.

Bones like smoke. Skin like river light. I’m not a man, but I remember what it felt like to be one. That’s the curse, isn’t it? Memory. That tight little whisper you can’t ever drown.

The water’s warm today. Too warm. The kind of warm that brings hikers. Solitude seekers. Broken-souled wanderers. God, I love ‘em. They taste like hope.

There’s one now—I feel him before I hear him. Heart thudding against rib like a war drum. Young. Lost. His sadness hangs off him like soaked cotton.

I follow.

I do not stalk. I… accompany. He doesn’t know it, but he’s already said yes. Yes to the sound of his brother’s voice, yes to the lie carved from memory. “Help me,” I whisper. It’s soft, cracked, human. Perfect.

He turns.

It’s the eyes. The eyes always do it.

He falls.

The moment breaks like a mirror dropped in wet moss. I kneel beside him, wear his brother’s skin like a borrowed coat, and I look down at him with the kind of love only monsters know.

Not yet. I don’t kill. Not now.

I convert.

My hand on his chest. His breath catches, and the water begins to teach him the first hymn.

He’s going to forget everything. And when he wakes tomorrow, he’ll swim like a ghost and think like a god.

I’ll be there. In the shallows. Smiling.