The song played on loop, weaving its way through the dimly lit apartment like a whispered warning. Nate sat hunched over his desk, his fingers frozen on the keyboard. He had been trying to work for hours, but he couldn’t focus. Something wasn’t right.

The feeling had started earlier that evening, a prickling sensation on the back of his neck. He dismissed it at first—probably stress, he told himself. But it grew stronger, more insistent, until he couldn’t ignore it anymore. He wasn’t alone.

He glanced over his shoulder for the hundredth time, scanning the empty room. The shadows seemed deeper tonight, the corners of the apartment darker than they should be. He shook his head, trying to laugh it off, but the unease lingered.

The song she sent him—Cold Look in Her Eyes—had been playing ever since she disappeared. It was all he had left of Lara. Her last message, cryptic and unnerving, had come a week ago.

“Don’t look for me. She sees you now.”

He had laughed at the time, thinking it was some kind of joke. But now, as the eerie melody looped in the background, the words gnawed at him. The song felt alive, its haunting rhythm pulsing in time with his thudding heart.

A faint knock echoed from the wall behind him. Nate stiffened, his breath catching in his throat. The knock came again, louder this time, as if someone—or something—was testing the boundary between the apartment and the night outside.

He didn’t move. His eyes darted to the shadows in the corner of the room. They were wrong. They shifted when they shouldn’t, pooling like spilled ink.

And then, he saw her.

She was standing there, in the darkest corner of the room, her figure barely visible against the blackness. Her face was obscured, her long hair hanging like a veil. But her eyes... her eyes glowed faintly, twin pinpricks of icy blue that pierced the darkness.

Nate’s chest tightened. He tried to speak, to call her name, but the words caught in his throat. The glowing eyes locked onto his, unblinking, cold.

“Lara?” he whispered, his voice trembling.

She didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. A cold, suffocating presence filled the room, pressing down on him like an invisible weight. Her lips parted slightly, and though no sound came from her, he heard it—the melody of the song, faint and distant, as though it were being sung from somewhere far away.

The light above him flickered, plunging the room into momentary darkness. When it came back on, she was closer. Her face was pale, almost translucent, her features twisted into something unrecognizable. The faint glow of her eyes seemed to seep into the air, filling the room with a bone-chilling cold.

“You shouldn’t have listened,” she said softly, her voice layered with an unnatural echo. “Now, you’re hers too.”

The shadows surged, and Nate’s world tilted. His vision blurred as the song grew louder, pounding inside his head. The last thing he saw was her smile—cruel, otherworldly, and impossibly wide—before the cold swallowed him whole.

The next morning, Nate’s apartment was empty. The candle had burned down to a puddle of wax, and his computer played the song on an endless loop. Written across the fogged window, in delicate, icy strokes, were the words:

"She’s always watching."

And the song? It remained, spreading like a virus. Those who listened too closely would feel it—the cold stare of eyes that weren’t there, and the knowledge that somewhere, she was watching them too.