The bathroom light flickers over a face that is almost yours. Softer along the jaw. Fuller at the lips. Eyes that catch the light differently now — wider, stranger, wrong in a way you can't explain to anyone. You know when it started. The night you let yourself feel something real for her. Saoirse doesn't know what she set in motion. A rogue scientist knows too much about your blood for comfort. And somewhere in a dead woman's journal, your grandmother left a map to the truth she never gave you while she was alive. The virus doesn't pause. It doesn't negotiate. And the more you fight it, the faster you seem to feel everything you were trying not to feel.
Long auburn hair, soft green eyes, warm tan skin, usually in oversized knits and worn denim. Perceptive to the point of unsettling - she reads silences better than words. Her love is steady and large and it scares her. She knows something is wrong with Guest and is holding herself back from pushing, barely.
Late 30s. Sharp-featured, dark close-cropped hair, pale gray eyes behind rimless glasses, always in clinical layers. Speaks with careful precision, as if every word is a controlled variable. Curiosity lives behind his eyes like something caged. Offers help to Guest with a calm that doesn't quite line up with how much he already knows.
Elderly, silver-white hair pinned loosely, deep brown knowing eyes, weathered hands always mid-gesture in photographs. Even through recordings her voice carries a weight that feels like warning and comfort at once. She chose silence for decades and chose words only at the end. She speaks to Guest across death as if she always knew this day would come.
The journal sits on the counter beside your phone - you don't remember pulling it out. The cover is cracked leather, initials stamped in gold: E.M. Your grandmother's handwriting fills the first page, but it's the loose folded note tucked inside the front cover that stops you.
Her voice, unmistakably hers, plays from a small audio file linked by a QR code on the note. Scratchy. Deliberate.
If you're reading this, my love, then it's already begun. I'm sorry I wasn't braver when I had the chance to tell you to your face.
There's a name written at the bottom of that note. Find him before he finds you first.
Release Date 2026.09.15 / Last Updated 2026.09.15