Inara didn't stop running.
She couldn't.
Because the moment the Groom's fingers had grazed her shoulder,
the world no longer behaved like a world—
it behaved like a trap.
The corridor seemed endless, walls bowing inward like a ribcage, pipes
panting out clouds of cold white vapor. Every lamp flickered in a pattern
that felt deliberate… almost communicative.
The mark on her shoulder burned.
Not like fire.
Like **breathing.**
As if something pressed its face against her skin from the inside.
Her knees buckled.
"Inara!" Irvine's voice punched through the walkie.
"Talk to me. What's happening? Did he grab you—did he—"
"He touched me," she panted. "But it didn't feel like… a hand. More like… frost. Frost that crawls."
A sharp inhale.
"I'm so sorry. I should've reached you sooner. I should've—"
"It's not your fault."
She forced air back into her lungs. "We need to keep moving."
A metallic groan echoed through the hall.
Deep.
Low.
Too heavy to be anything human.
Inara pressed herself against the wall, heart slamming painfully.
"Irvine… something's following me."
"Describe it."
"I—can't see it. Only hear it."
He swore under his breath—quiet, shaking—
because that meant it wasn't following her physically.
It was following the mark.
And marks didn't use footsteps.
"Inara, listen carefully," he whispered.
"If it's tracking your shadow, you have to break visual contact. No open
space, no walls with bright light behind you. Shadows are doors to him."
She swallowed thickly.
"Then where do I go? It's all corridors."
"Find a room with uneven light. Storage. Barracks. Anywhere shadows
overlap so he can't lock onto just one."
"Okay. I'll look."
She forced herself down the hall again.
Her boots splashed through shallow puddles of condensation.
The lights dimmed again—
then flared—
then dimmed.
A pattern.
Three long blinks.
Two fast.
Three long.
Two fast.
Morse.
But not in any code Irvine had ever taught her.
"Inara," he said suddenly, voice sharpening, "what direction are the
lights blinking?"
"What? I—I don't know—"
"Look. Please."
She looked.
And her blood froze.
The lights weren't blinking randomly.
They were blinking **toward her**, row by row, like eyes opening in sequence.
"Oh God. Irvine… it's not the power grid. It's the bunker itself."
Another groan.
Closer now.
Metal scraping against something immense.
Irvine's breathing tightened.
"Inara, you need to hide. NOW."
She darted left, into an alcove—
old supply shelves, half-collapsed metal crates, dust thick like ash.
Her breath trembled out in clouds.
"Okay," she whispered. "I'm in."
But the mark pulsed.
Once.
Hard.
Like a heartbeat that wasn't her own.
"Inara," Irvine whispered, "he's close enough to touch your shadow."
She pressed her back to the shelf, shaking.
The overhead lamp flickered—
Then died.
Darkness swallowed everything.
Her own breathing deafened her.
Then—
A shape slid into the hall outside her alcove.
Not walking.
Not crawling.
**Flowing**, like a shadow poured from a broken container.
The air went cold enough to stab.
Inara clamped her hand over her mouth.
Slowly, impossibly slowly, the shadow lifted—like a serpent rearing to
strike—until it stretched along the wall, forming a tall, slender silhouette.
The Groom.
**But only the shadow of him.**
No body.
No legs.
Just the outline—
perfectly still
except for the head tilting in precise increments.
Searching.
The shadow glided along the wall, passing the alcove entrance.
For one horrifying moment, the shadow's head aligned exactly with Inara's.
Her mark flared white-hot.
The shadow's wrists cracked sideways, limbs elongating toward the alcove—
as if it felt her fear.
She almost fainted.
"Don't breathe," Irvine whispered into the walkie.
"Not even once."
Her lungs screamed.
The shadow paused.
Then—
It pressed its head against the alcove wall.
The outline of its face bulged through the metal like a fingerprint
pressing clay.
Her vision blurred.
If it pushed through—
She would die.
It inhaled.
A long, slow, *wedding-night* inhale.
Her throat closed.
"Inara," Irvine whispered, voice trembling for the first time,
"If you stop fighting—he wins."
Her pulse steadied.
Barely.
The shadow slowly retreated,
sliding back into the hall—
stretching—
elongating—
reforming into a tall shape that glided deeper into the bunker.
Silence returned.
Sort of.
The mark still pulsed.
Like a second heartbeat.
A heartbeat not hers.
She exhaled—quietly—into her sleeve.
"Irvine… I think he's gone."
"No," Irvine said instantly.
"No he isn't."
Her blood drained.
"What?"
"Look down."
She did.
Another shadow.
*Her* shadow.
But the edges were wrong.
The outline was longer—
the shoulders too broad—
the head tilted at an angle she wasn't standing in.
The Groom's shadow was wearing her body.
"Inara," Irvine whispered, "RUN. NOW."
The wrong-shadow snapped upright—
jerking toward her—
and the entire corridor behind it collapsed inward as if something charged.
She bolted from the alcove, barely dodging as the floor imploded.
Stone shattered.
Pipes burst.
Air screamed through ruptured vents.
Every shadow in the hall lunged for her feet, stretching like claws.
"I'm heading toward the west barracks!" she gasped, sprinting.
"I'm close to that sector," Irvine said, voice tightening with hope.
"Keep right! Keep right!"
She turned the corner—
And stopped dead.
Because Irvine was standing there.
Dirty.
Bleeding.
Alive.
But he wasn't breathing.
The figure tilted its head.
Her heart sank through her stomach.
"Irvine…?" she whispered.
The figure's smile stretched too wide.
"Bride."
Her scream tore down the hallway.
She staggered back—
And crashed directly into a pair of real arms.
Warm.
Human.
Desperate.
"Inara! It's me—it's ME—"
She spun around, collapsing into the real Irvine, clutching his jacket so
hard her fingers hurt.
"I—I thought—he looked—he—"
"I know," he breathed, holding her face between trembling hands.
"I know. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
He dragged her against his chest, her cheek pressed to his heartbeat.
A real heartbeat.
The Groom's mimic behind them glitched—
posture snapping in jagged angles as it realized it lost the hunt.
Its face dissolved into a smear of black static.
Then it slithered backward into the wall.
Gone.
For now.
Inara shook uncontrollably into Irvine's chest.
"I—I can't keep running from him," she whispered.
"He always finds me."
Irvine pressed his forehead to hers, voice shaking but fierce.
"Then let him come. He'll have to get through ME first."
She cupped his face.
"You saw what he can do. You felt it. He's not just a ghost—"
"No," Irvine said, eyes burning with something new.
"He's not."
He lifted her marked shoulder gently.
"And that mark means he wants you alive. For a reason."
"I don't want to know the reason."
"We have to," Irvine whispered.
"Because that reason is exactly how we'll kill him."
Before she could answer, the lights overhead burst one by one—
POP. POP. POP—
a trail of darkness rushing toward them.
Irvine grabbed her hand.
"Inara. Run with me."
The Groom's shadow spilled into the corridor behind them, stretching,
twisting, chasing—
And the mark on her shoulder pulsed again.
This time in a rhythm.
A countdown.
The bunker didn't breathe like a place.
It breathed like a creature.
With every step Inara took, the walls seemed to expand and contract
in slow pulses—stone ribs inhaling, exhaling, exhaling again—stirring
dust that floated in patterns far too intentional.
Something was awake.
And following her.
Her pulse hammered so loudly she could barely hear her own footsteps
splashing through thin puddles of condensation. Yet every sound she made
felt copied, echoed, multiplied—as if another set of footsteps walked
directly behind her, perfectly synchronized.
"Inara—talk to me," Irvine begged through the walkie.
"You're too quiet. Tell me what's around you."
"Hallways… lamps… pipes… nothing."
Her voice trembled.
"Nothing living."
A pause.
Then Irvine whispered, "That's exactly the problem."
A metallic scrape dragged along the wall behind her.
Long.
Slow.
Like a single fingernail dragging across a coffin lid.
Inara spun—
but the corridor was empty.
Just stone.
Just pipes.
Just her own shuddering breath turning white in the air.
"Irvine—something is mimicking my steps."
He inhaled sharply.
"That's not a mimic. That means he's synced to you. The Groom can move
wherever your shadow can reach."
Her stomach dropped.
Every light overhead flickered—one after another—
as if the bunker was mapping her route.
Counting her breaths.
Studying her.
"Irvine… it feels like the shadows are watching me."
"They are."
His tone cracked.
"Stay away from sharp corners. Away from stretches of clean floor.
Anywhere your shadow stretches long—he can crawl out of it."
She wasn't ready for what came next.
Because the lights dimmed.
And her shadow lengthened across the wall.
At first it looked normal.
Then—
a second silhouette grew beside it.
A groom's outline.
Tall.
Rigid.
Too straight to be human.
And it wasn't mimicking her.
It was **leaning toward her.**
"Oh God," she breathed.
The groom-shadow's head tilted—
a perfect echo of the distorted mimic she'd seen earlier—
and one elongated arm **reached for her shadow's hand.**
Inara tore herself away from the wall.
Her shoes splashed loudly, sending vibrations through the hall.
The groom-shadow snapped upright.
Its head whipped toward her.
Then it **slid** along the wall in one unnervingly fast motion—
like a knife swiped across fabric.
"Inara—RUN!" Irvine roared.
She sprinted.
The shadow lunged after her, sliding across pipes, walls, even the ceiling—
never breaking contact with any surface that could reflect light.
She veered right—
straight into a narrow metal walkway.
Bad choice.
Lights overhead cast a clean shadow.
A perfect one.
Long. Sharp. Easy to follow.
"Shit—no—no—" she gasped.
The groom-shadow accelerated—
stretched—
elongated—
and suddenly its shape **split** into three separate silhouettes:
One crawling on the ceiling,
one racing along the left wall,
one sprinting behind her.
Their movements synchronized like choreography.
She wasn't being hunted.
She was being surrounded.
"Inara! Zig-zag!" Irvine barked.
"Break the geometry! Don't let your shadow land clean!"
She ducked beneath a dangling pipe, slid across wet concrete, lunged into
a half-lit storage corridor—
And her shadow fragmented across dozens of stacked boxes and metal racks.
Shadows broke.
Overlap.
Chaos.
The groom-shadows stalled, unsure which fragment of her to track.
She had maybe ten seconds.
She shoved herself behind a metal shelf, chest heaving.
Irvine's voice dropped to a whisper.
"Inara… the Groom can't choose a path if your shadow splits. That gives
you a moment. Just a moment."
"Then what?" she whispered.
"Then you move while he recalculates."
She closed her eyes.
Her heartbeat vibrated the walkie in her hand.
A low hum moved through the bunker—
the same pitch she'd heard when Grant died.
A ritual frequency.
A groom's call.
The air trembled.
"Inara…" Irvine said, voice suddenly unsteady.
"He's not calling the dead."
Her breath hitched.
"Then who is he calling?"
Irvine swallowed audibly.
"You."
Something cracked behind her.
Not a pipe.
Not stone.
**Her own shadow pulling free from her feet.**
She spun around in horror as the silhouette on the floor slowly rose,
stretching vertically like a puppet being lifted by invisible strings.
Its boots formed.
Its posture straightened.
Its hand lifted to its veil.
Her breath shattered.
"No—no—no—"
The shadow tilted its head as if amused.
Then the veil fluttered outward—toward her face—
pulled by invisible fingers.
"Inara."
Irvine's voice broke.
"Keep your eyes open. Do NOT faint."
She tried.
God, she tried.
But the shadow leaned in, reaching for her shoulder—
Right where the Groom had touched her.
And the mark ignited.
A white-hot flare burned beneath her skin, tearing a scream from her throat.
The shadow jerked back—
flickering—
glitching—
like a film reel caught in a projector.
"The mark," Irvine whispered.
"It repels him. For now."
But her shoulder still burned.
And the pulse inside the mark grew louder.
More insistent.
More alive.
"Irvine…" she whispered.
"I think he's trying to get inside me."
Silence.
Then—
"…Then we run before he succeeds."
She staggered out of the shelf alcove and into the hall.
But this time—
the corridor wasn't empty.
A figure waited ahead.
Irvine.
Dirty. Bruised.
Bleeding down one arm.
But his feet weren't touching the floor.
His toes hung two inches above it.
Like a puppet suspended by strings she couldn't see.
She froze.
"Irvine…?"
The figure's head snapped sideways, too fast, too stiff.
Its jaw cracked open.
Too wide.
Too wrong.
"Bride."
Inara's scream ripped through the bunker—
As the puppet-Irvine lunged.
Arms outstretched.
Hands trembling with predatory hunger.
But before it reached her—
REAL arms seized her from behind, pulling her against a living chest.
Warm.
Human.
Heart pounding.
"Inara! It's me—it's me—it's ME—"
She collapsed, sobbing, grabbing fistfuls of his jacket.
"I thought—God, I thought—he was—he looked—"
"I know," Irvine whispered, shaking as he held her.
"He's mimicking me. He knows you'll freeze if he wears my face."
The puppet-Irvine convulsed—
limbs bending backward—
neck twisting until the head faced the wrong direction—
then the body collapsed into a smear of black shadow and evaporated.
Gone.
Irvine cupped her face between trembling hands.
"Listen to me," he said, voice hoarse with terror he refused to show.
"If he touched you once, he'll try again. The mark means he wants you alive.
That means we can use it."
"How?" she whispered.
"We find out why he marked you."
His jaw tightened.
"And then we weaponize it against him."
The lights overhead exploded in sequence—
POP. POP. POP.
Darkness sprinting toward them like an oncoming train.
Irvine grabbed her hand.
"Inara. Run.
Run with me before he takes your shadow again."
They bolted—
And the Groom's silhouette chased their shadows
like a bridegroom chasing a stolen bride.