Chapter 4 Chapter 4
Morning came brittle and colourless. The ribbon still hung from the umbrella handle, silver letters catching the light like a whisper she couldn’t shake: CAGE.
Nina told herself not to touch it, yet by the time she left for class, it was looped around her wrist, half-hidden beneath her sleeve. She didn’t know why. Maybe proof that it had really happened. Maybe a warning she could feel against her pulse.
The city felt narrower than ever. Every alley looked like a mouth; every tram window was a mirror. She caught herself scanning faces, hunting for one she both dreaded and needed to see.
He wasn’t there. Not that morning. Not anywhere she could name.
By noon, she began to hope that the silence meant it was over.
Then she found the note in her bag.
No envelope. No signature. Only five words, pressed into thick cream paper:
You’ll miss the rain tonight.
The handwriting was the same: deliberate, elegant, dangerous in its calm.
She folded it once, slid it back into the pocket, and forced herself to finish her lecture. But when she left the hall, the first drops were already falling.
She skipped the tram and walked home through the storm.
Ljubljana after dark was all reflections—amber light trembling on the wet river, the castle hill a ghost above the fog. Umbrellas passed like slow-moving planets. Her boots splashed through puddles that mirrored her face back at her in fragments.
Halfway across the bridge, she saw him.
Not close. Not even facing her. Just a dark figure at the far end, leaning on the railing as though listening to the water. Each flash of lightning carved him sharper out of the rain.
Nina’s breath hitched. She almost turned around—but then he looked over his shoulder.
Even through the distance, she felt the pull of that gaze, the way it threaded through noise and rain until the rest of the world dimmed.
A car passed between them. When it was gone, he wasn’t there.
Her apartment was too quiet. She left the lights off, standing in the doorway with rainwater dripping from her hair, listening. The radiator hissed. Pipes groaned. Somewhere in the courtyard, a cat yowled. Ordinary sounds. Familiar.
She almost laughed at herself—until she saw the book.
It lay open on the desk, though she hadn’t touched it since the night before. A faint draft turned the pages, slow and patient, until the paper stilled on its own.
New words waited there, glistening wetly in the lamplight when she switched the light on.
I told you you’d miss it.
Her hand shook as she traced the ink. It wasn’t quite dry.
For the first time, she noticed what lay beside the book: a key.
Small, old-fashioned, black iron. Not hers.
A folded slip of paper was tied to it with a thread of the same black ribbon.
Bridge Street. Door 17.
Her chest tightened. That address was barely two blocks from the café where she worked—a narrow street lined with shuttered art galleries and one antique shop that never seemed open.
She should have thrown the key away.
Instead, she found herself outside Door 17 before she could think of a reason not to.
The street was silent except for the rain. The door was wooden, peeling paint, a faint glow leaking from the edges as if someone had left a lamp burning inside. She hesitated, heart beating so loud she felt it in her throat.
The key slid into the lock as if it had always belonged there.
The hinges creaked.
Inside: dust, old wood, the smell of rain soaked into stone. The space looked like an abandoned studio—bare walls, a single chair, an open skylight spilling silver water down onto the floor.
And on the chair, a photograph.
Nina’s photograph.
She recognised the coat she was wearing in, the one hanging damp on her shoulders right now. The picture had been taken that same evening, on the bridge.
She staggered back, breath catching. The sound of footsteps echoed above her—slow, deliberate, coming down a narrow staircase she hadn’t seen in the shadows.
A voice followed them, low and even.
“You shouldn’t have come alone.”
Her spine locked.
He stepped into the light, rain still glistening on his hair. His expression was unreadable, but the calm in his eyes frightened her more than any anger could have.
“You wanted answers,” he said quietly. “So here I am.”
Nina swallowed hard. “How do you keep—doing this? The messages, the book—how? Who are you?”
He studied her for a long moment before answering. “Adrian, and because you keep reading them.”
The words landed like a blow. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one that matters.” He took a slow step closer. “You open the book, you come when I call, you wear what I leave for you. You’ve already chosen the language we speak.”
“Stop,” she whispered. “This isn’t a game.”
“No,” he said. “It’s a mirror.”
He reached out—not touching, just tracing the air near her face. The scent of rain and leather filled the space between them.
Nina felt the world narrow to that single breath of distance, the pulse under her skin, the knowledge that she should run and the deeper knowledge that she wouldn’t.
His voice dropped to a murmur. “I needed you to see what it feels like to be watched. Because soon, others will be watching you for reasons far less kind.”
Her eyes widened. “What are you talking about?”
A faint smile ghosted across his lips. “Not yet. But when it starts, you’ll come to me again.”
He stepped back into the shadows, leaving the rainlight where he had stood. “Lock the door behind you, Nina.”
Then he was gone.
Only the echo of his footsteps and the photograph on the chair remained.
Nina pressed her back to the wall, forcing herself to breathe. The studio was empty, but the air still carried the shape of him—the command in his tone, the promise beneath it, the warning she didn’t understand.
She looked down at the photo again.
In the blurred reflection of the river behind her, another figure stood half-hidden in the mist.
Not Adrian.
Someone else.
The edges of the paper were wet from her hands when she folded it. She left the key on the chair and stepped back into the rain.
Across the street, a black car idled with its lights off.
When she glanced toward it, the engine purred once and went still.
