Chapter One: The Watcher
I had watched countless people die. Some begged. Some fought. Some accepted their fate with eerie silence. I had seen every shade of fear, every form of suffering. But Mia Ariana fascinated me in a way no target ever had.
She was not a target. Not yet.
She was just an assignment—observe, gather information, report back. That was what the agency wanted. But they had not told me why. No details. No explanation. Just a name.
Mia Ariana.
A ghost of a woman. No social media. No public appearances. Nothing but ink on pages, her name scrawled across book covers soaked in tragedy. Her characters suffered, and her readers loved her for it.
And me? I understood her.
That was why, when I first laid eyes on her, I felt… disappointed.
She was so ordinary.
Standing in the dim glow of a streetlamp, she carried a bag of groceries, struggling with her keys at the front door. A writer lost in her thoughts, oblivious to the world around her. No trace of the cruelty I had seen in her books. No sign of the woman who created nightmares.
And yet, I knew the truth.
Somewhere inside her was the darkness I had spent years searching for.
I followed her inside. Not physically—not yet. I had studied her for weeks, memorized her every move. She always forgot to lock her door the first time. Always turned on the same two lamps. Always placed her keys on the counter before sighing as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders.
Predictable. Vulnerable.
Pathetic.
If she loved suffering so much, I would make her live in it.
At first, it would be subtle. A missing book. A misplaced page from her newest manuscript. A window left open that she swore she had closed.
Then, it would escalate.
A phone call with no voice on the other end. A figure in the hallway mirror. Footsteps behind her when she walked alone.
Mia Ariana wrote about fear. It was time for her to feel it.