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Table of Contents:

Chapter 1. Rain on Granliden's Wet Asphalt

Chapter 2. Three Seconds in the Stairwell

Chapter 3. Watching Her Lit Window at Night

Chapter 4. A Psychic She Cannot Name

Chapter 5. Hollow Forehead Kiss at the Grave

Chapter 6. Frost on the Volvo's Windshield

Chapter 7. My Own Hands, His Fantasies

Chapter 8. "You're Imagining It," He Says

Chapter 9. Stina's Cold Eyes in Glass

Chapter 10. Annotated Paperback Handed in Darkness

Chapter 11. The Crucifix and Wrong Psalm

Chapter 12. Silver Eyes in Fogged Glass

Chapter 13. Walking Away from the Idling Bus

Chapter 14. "I Thought You Were More Courageous"

Chapter 15. Rain-Soaked Hair and Warm Lips

Chapter 16. Jeans Tangled, Lights Flickering

Chapter 17. Holy Water and Trembling Ground

Chapter 18. Dawn Coffee After the Ground Trembled

Chapter 1. Rain on Granliden's Wet Asphalt 

The bus slowed before I was ready for it, and Granliden arrived the way it always had—not as a destination but as a fact, a stubborn thing that had been here the whole time I was gone, unchanged and indifferent to my absence. Through the rain-streaked window I watched it materialize in pieces: a streetlamp haloed in mist, the pharmacy sign glowing pale green, the flat roofs of Storgatan hunched low against the October sky. The smell reached me even before the doors opened—wet bark, cold earth, something resinous and alive that the wind had been carrying through spruce for miles before delivering it here, to this bus stop, to me.

I stepped down onto slick asphalt and the rain found me immediately. Not the dramatic kind—not the storms that Gothenburg threw against its harbour walls—but the fine, persistent Småland rain that soaked through wool before you noticed it, that pooled in the cracked pavement and made everything reflective, doubled, uncertain. My suitcase wheels caught in a gap between cobblestones. I yanked it free with more force than necessary.

Storgatan stretched ahead of me, four hundred metres of the only life this town had ever offered. The ICA’s fluorescent glow leaked through its windows. The OKQ8 neon—orange, red—bled across the wet road like something wounded. I walked past the bakery with its steamed-up glass, past the thrift store whose door had always stuck in the wet, past the hairdresser that still bore the same name in the same faded lettering. Nothing had moved. Nothing had changed. And yet I felt like a stranger walking through a photograph I’d once lived inside.

I had left Gothenburg three days ago. Or rather—Gothenburg had finished with me. The marketing firm, the open-plan office, the colleagues who smiled and smiled and then told HR that I was “difficult,” “too intense,” “imagining” the exclusion. They had dismantled me with such quiet efficiency that by the end I couldn’t tell the difference between their cruelty and my own perception. You’re too sensitive, Helena. You’re reading into things. I heard those words now the way one hears a song stuck on repeat—without meaning, just pattern, just noise.

And then Stina had died. Had chosen to die. Had taken pills in her childhood bedroom with her headphones still playing, and left me holding the manuscript and the fury and the half-built world we’d created together since we were twelve. I did not feel guilt. I wanted to be clear about that, even to myself—I did not feel guilty. I felt rage. Pure, clean, directional rage. She had cut me off two years ago with a text—I can’t do this anymore—and I had respected it. I had sent money. I had visited when allowed. I had held the space open for her return. And she had used that space to leave permanently, without asking, without warning, without giving me the chance to say: You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to build a world with someone and then abandon it.

But she had. And now the fae manuscript—our private language, our shared kingdom—sat in my satchel like an orphaned thing, half her handwriting and half mine, waiting for me to decide whether carrying it forward was love or theft.

Tallhöjden rose ahead of me on its gentle slope, the concrete block from 1973 with its yellowed balconies and its smell of cooking and cold air. Home. Or the closest thing to it that remained.

The stairwell light clicked on when I pushed through the entrance, and I was counting—ninety seconds, never quite enough to reach the top—when I heard footsteps descending. A familiar rhythm. Long stride, unhurried.

Ansgar appeared on the landing above me, holding a paper bag from ICA and his enormous keyring—a dozen keys to the community hall, jangling faintly against his hip. Black hair pushed back from his forehead, pale skin made paler by the stairwell’s harsh light. He looked exactly the same. And somehow... not.

“Helena.” His eyes—pale blue, almost silver in this light—found mine, and something in his expression shifted. Not surprise exactly. Recognition. As if he’d been waiting without knowing he was waiting. “You’re back.”

“Observant as ever,” I said, dragging my suitcase up the next step. “Did the suitcase give it away, or was it my general air of defeat?”

The corner of his mouth lifted—barely, but I knew his face well enough to read it. We’d grown up on opposite sides of this stairwell shaft, our bedroom windows facing each other through frosted glass. I’d watched his shadow move behind that glass for years before I left. “The suitcase,” he said. “Your air of defeat is indistinguishable from your air of determination. Always has been.”

I laughed—surprised by it, by how easily he could still do that. “Flattering.”

He shifted the paper bag to his other arm, and I noticed the watch on his wrist—his grandmother’s Seiko, still ticking after all these years. “How long are you staying?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “A while. Maybe.”

He nodded, as if this were sufficient. That was Ansgar—he didn’t push. He let silence sit between people without trying to fill it. “Your mum’s been hovering by the window all afternoon,” he added, already continuing down the stairs. “Just so you know.”

“Of course she has.” I smiled despite myself. “Thanks for the warning.”

He raised one hand in a half-wave without turning back, and disappeared around the landing below. The stairwell light clicked off. I stood in the dark for a moment, my suitcase handle cold in my grip, and felt... something. A residual warmth in my sternum that I could not name and did not try to.

My mother opened the flat door before I could fit the key. She pulled me in with both hands, kissed my cheek, said oh, you’re soaked and have you eaten and your room is ready, I put fresh sheets on yesterday all in one breath. The flat smelled of coffee and radiator heat—the particular warmth of a home that had been running at full temperature for hours in preparation. My father’s slippers sat by the door; he was at work still, or perhaps in the living room with the television on low. I could hear its murmur through the wall.

Later—after dinner, after my mother’s questions that circled but never landed, after my father’s quiet nod from his armchair—I closed myself into my childhood bedroom. Small. North-facing. Cold even with the radiator on. The single bed, the desk, the lamp, the window that looked across the stairwell shaft to the building opposite. To Ansgar’s flat. His light was on—a warm amber glow behind the frosted glass, and I could see the barest suggestion of movement there. A shadow. Living its quiet life.

I unpacked the fae manuscript carefully, spreading the notebooks across the desk. Stina’s handwriting—sharp, angular, impatient—interleaved with mine. I touched the pages but did not read them. Not yet. Instead, I arranged my crystals on the windowsill: moonstone, amethyst, three pieces of polished quartz. Cheap things. Stina had called them my “fae crystals” with a voice that was half-mocking, half-tender. My fae queen.

I told myself I had come home for solid ground. For something beneath my feet that I could trust to hold. But as I breathed the town’s cold air through the gap where the window never fully sealed, I felt something else entirely—a dread without shape or name. A premonition dressed in nothing but rain and the smell of spruce.

Returning would either save me or destroy me. I did not yet know which.

The radiator ticked. Across the shaft, Ansgar’s light went off. And the October dark pressed in from every side, patient as the forest that surrounded this town, waiting for something I could not yet see to begin.

Chapter 2. Three Seconds in the Stairwell 

On the third morning, I ran out of coffee filters—or rather, my mother’s stash ran out, the last one sacrificed to my father’s six a.m. routine before he left for the water treatment facility—and I had to go downstairs. My mother had left a note on the kitchen counter: Gone to the pharmacy, back by eleven. There’s bread. The flat was quiet in the way only an empty family home can be—full of residual sound, the hum of the refrigerator, the ticking radiator, the ghost of my parents’ morning conversation still lingering in the air like warmth from an extinguished candle.

I pulled on my grey-blue plaid shirt over the crimson long-sleeve, shoved my feet into still-damp sneakers, and stepped into the stairwell. The timer light clicked on. Ninety seconds. I was counting—had always counted, since childhood—when I heard the entrance door open below, and footsteps ascending.

Ansgar appeared at the turn of the landing, paper bag from ICA in one hand, his enormous keyring jangling against his thigh with each step. Black jeans, charcoal sweater, his dark hair slightly damp from the walk. He saw me and something flickered across his face—not surprise this time but something quieter, something I might have called pleasure if I’d been brave enough to name it.

“Coffee emergency?” he asked, tilting his head in that way he had—slightly angled, as if he were hearing something beyond my words.

“How did you—“

“You have the look.” He paused on the step below mine, and suddenly we were almost the same height, his pale blue eyes level with mine. “Slightly desperate. Slightly murderous. Classic Helena-without-caffeine.”

I wanted to laugh. I almost did. But something stopped me—a sensation I could not explain, as if the air between us had thickened, grown denser. Like the atmospheric pressure before a storm drops. I felt it in my sternum; a pull, specific and directional, aimed at him. My breath caught.

“I’m not murderous,” I managed. “I’m... determined.”

“Right. Indistinguishable, as I said.” His eyes held mine for a beat too long. The dark circles beneath them were deeper than they’d been two days ago—bruised-looking, the mark of someone who hadn’t been sleeping. I wanted to ask about it. I wanted to touch the thin skin there with my thumb and say are you alright? I did neither.

“How’s the manuscript going?” he asked, shifting the bag to his other arm. Casual. As if we were still the same people who’d shared a stairwell for eighteen years, who’d grown up hearing each other’s music through the walls. And we were. We were those people. But also, suddenly, we were not.

“Slowly,” I admitted. “I keep staring at Stina’s handwriting and forgetting what century I’m in.”

Something moved behind his eyes—a shadow, quick, then gone. “Give yourself time,” he said. Low, level, unhurried. The way he always spoke. “It’s only been three days.”

“Since I got back, or since she died?”

He looked at me carefully. “Both. Either.”

I nodded, swallowing something that felt too large for my throat. “Right. Well. Coffee filters await. The ICA calls.”

“They‘re on the second aisle. Left side, next to the tea.” He was already moving past me, ascending, his arm brushing mine in the narrow stairwell—and the contact, brief as it was through two layers of fabric, sent something electric through my skin. I turned to watch him go. His back, the slight set of his shoulders, the keys catching the stairwell light before it clicked off and left us both in darkness.

I stood there. In the dark. My heart hammering against my ribs like something trying to escape.

Stop it, I told myself. He’s Ansgar. He’s been Ansgar since you were seven years old. But something had changed—not in the history between us but in the frequency of it, as if someone had tuned our familiar signal to a different channel. One I didn’t know how to read yet.

The ICA was nearly empty at this hour. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, making everything look slightly unwell—the linoleum floor, my own hands, the rows of crispbread and refrigerated meats. I found the coffee filters on the second aisle, left side, next to the tea. Exactly where he‘d said. I held the package and stared at it for longer than any person should stare at coffee filters, because my mind was not in this store. It was still in the stairwell, replaying the moment his arm had brushed mine, the way the air had felt before that contact—charged, waiting.

You’re being ridiculous, Stina’s voice said in my head. Dry. Quick. Deadly. He’s your neighbour. He’s always been your neighbour. Get the filters and go home.

I got the filters. I went home.

But the afternoon that followed was useless. I sat at my childhood desk with the fae manuscript open—Stina’s angular handwriting on the left page, mine on the right, the world we’d built together spread between us like a country that had lost its borders. I opened my laptop. I placed my fingers on the keys. I began typing:

The fae queen walked through the silver forest, her—

And then, without meaning to, without understanding why: Ansgar.

I deleted it. Tried again. The fae queen’s companion had silver eyes and—

Ansgar.

I slammed the laptop shut. My cheeks were burning. This was pathetic. This was the behaviour of someone who had lost all sense of proportion, all ability to distinguish between reality and the stories she told herself. I knew this because I had been here before—at the marketing firm, convinced that something was happening that everyone else said wasn’t. You’re reading into things, Helena. You’re too intense.