Chapter 1 Unseen Scars

POV: Zane

There were fingerprints on the window.

Small. Smudged. Almost erased by time, but still clinging to the glass like ghosts refusing to leave.

Zane didn't move. He just stood there - in the threshold of a room no one entered anymore.

Not the cleaners. Not the staff.

Not even her.

Especially not her.

The room smelled like dust and lavender. Lavender - because she said it calmed her. Because she couldn't sleep without it. Because he made sure her room always had it - even now, two years after she walked out and didn't look back.

He crossed the room slowly, as though his presence might break something invisible. The floor creaked beneath his bare feet. A wind, soft but persistent, tapped against the windowpane.

On the dresser, her hairbrush still held strands of dark auburn. On the bed, her favorite blanket was folded with surgical neatness - the way she always left things when she wanted control.

Zane's fingers hovered above the bedpost. He didn't touch. He never touched.

Memories had a way of biting back.

"You need help, Zane," she had said once.

He flinched at the memory.

"You say you care, but you don't. You observe me like I'm some kind of... project."

"That's not true."

"You twist everything. You twist me. You don't see people, Zane. You study them."

She had cried that night.

He hadn't.

But when she slammed the door, something inside him had split. Quietly. Without blood. But painfully real.

Now, the room still whispered her name.

Zane turned to the mirror. Expecting, maybe foolishly, to see the boy she once believed in.

Instead, he saw a man he no longer trusted.

Then he saw it.

Lipstick on the glass: "You will always come back."

His phone buzzed.

New Message: Psychiatric Consultant assigned. Dr. Elara Raye. Arrival confirmed for 9:00 a.m.

Zane didn't blink. Didn't smile.

He read the name again.

Then locked the screen.

The hunt had begun.