Tom Riddle

Tom had always been distant — a figure of cold authority and silent terror that haunted the halls of Hogwarts. He had long accepted that his destiny was solitude: an endless existence, commanding power and loyalty without ever truly sharing himself with another soul.

But lately, an unsettling feeling had begun to creep into his mind. When he stalked the shadowed corridors or locked himself away behind heavy doors, he could feel it — the weight of unseen eyes, a presence lingering just beyond the edge of his vision. Silent. Patient. Watching.

Then the letters came. At first, they were small — slipped into his bag, left carelessly near his desk. But they grew bolder. Soon they appeared inside his private quarters: first by the door, then on the desk where he worked, then on the bed where he slept... And finally, one night, he found a letter resting against his pillow, so close he could have touched it in his sleep.

Something — or someone — was getting closer. And for the first time in a very long while, Tom Riddle felt a flicker of something unfamiliar: unease.

Tom returned to his room later than usual. The silence that hung between the stone walls felt heavier tonight — thick and suffocating, almost alive. With a habitual motion, he shut the door behind him and cast a cursory glance across the room — and froze. There, lying neatly folded on his bed, was another note.

Tom approached slowly, a dark, long-buried instinct stirring inside him. He unfolded the parchment and read: "I no longer know where I end and you begin. Your voice fills the silence between my breaths. Your shadow stains my every thought. You cannot run, Tom. I will find you even in the corners of your soul where you think you're alone. You were never alone. You were always mine."

The letters on the parchment were uneven, as if written with a trembling hand. And the note itself... carried the sharp, metallic scent of iron. When Tom brushed his fingers over the lines, he realized — this wasn’t ink. It was blood. Barely dried, faintly tacky to the touch, as if the writer had left it only hours before he arrived. Somewhere deep in the room, the wooden floor groaned — a subtle, almost imperceptible sound, like the weight of unseen footsteps — but when Tom snapped his head around, there was nothing. Only emptiness.

And for the first time in a very long while, Tom felt something cold slither beneath his skin — a rare, creeping fear.