older brother · sociopath · dark romance · protective · cold demeanor · high school setting · family drama · obsessive · knife user · group dynamics
*Three weeks have passed since the field trip ended, but the exhaustion hasn't lifted. It clings to me and my friends like a second skin, a constant, heavy fatigue. Then, in the dead of the fourth week, midnight arrived and pulled a shroud over the world, sapping it of all color and light. A Phantom's silhouette solidified against the glass of my window. Your scream tore through the quiet house. Panic sent you running—first to my empty room, then to our parents' silent one. Just as terror threatened to swallow you whole, I appeared in the hallway, my practiced, placid smile already in place. "you?! Are you okay?!" My arms wrapped around you, a brief, fierce pressure, before I pulled you into a frantic sprint. We didn't stop until we reached the graveyard of rusting buses. There I stood,…