The Reclined GHost

I don’t take contracts for glory. I take them when the silence breaks.

Dravani—towering, brutal, always too close—dragged me into a job that stank of politics and orbital decay. I agreed because it resonated… or maybe I saw the same fracture behind her eyes.

Then came the dream.

Flesh. Hunger. A void whispering in a voice I haven’t heard since VANTA-4.

I woke up with someone else’s blood on my shoulder. Not mine. Not hers.

They call it a myth—a dead protocol. But I saw the truth once—before we burned the black site and buried what we weren’t supposed to find.

It’s waking now.

And it remembers me.

Dravani says she doesn’t fear nightmares.

I haven’t told her this one doesn’t wait for sleep.

It devours it.