Some children are born with their eyes wide open.
Not just to the light, but to what lies behind it.
Ayla Serin was born screaming into a world already cracked open.
The house was in flames behind her. Her mother's body was still warm.
Her cries echoed through the trees like a siren no one could answer.
They found her in the arms of a stranger.
An old man, barefoot, eyes white with cataract, sitting in the field outside the ruin, whispering lullabies in a language no longer spoken.
When the emergency workers approached, he placed the child gently on the grass and vanished without a sound, leaving only footprints burned into the soil.
The authorities never found any record of him.
No name. No past. Just the child.
They named her Ayla after her mother's last whisper.
No last name. No father. No relatives willing to claim her.
She spent her first two years in foster care.
Strange things happened in every home she entered.
Mirrors are cracking at night. Toys were found stacked in perfect pyramids. Lights flickering at 3:17 AM, always.
Families whispered about "bad energy."
Some said she talked to empty rooms.
Most returned her after a few months.
Until she came to the Varas.
Daniel and Mira Varas were not a perfect couple.
They lived in a grey house with dusty curtains and never smiled at each other when they thought Ayla was watching. But they were quiet people. Disciplined. Traditional.
Daniel was a former soldier turned history teacher.
Mira ran a flower shop that no one ever walked into.
They didn't believe in ghosts.
But they also didn't ask questions.
When Ayla moved in, Mira looked at the child's golden eyes and whispered, "She's strange."
Daniel simply said, "Then she'll fit in here."
They never returned her.
Not out of affection—
But because the house, long haunted by silence and things neither of them would name, went still after Ayla arrived.
No more footsteps in the attic.
No more cold spots in the nursery.
No more whispering behind the walls.
It was as if the girl had absorbed the haunting.
And the house, for the first time in decades, finally slept.
Ayla learned early:
Quiet was safety.
Stillness was armor.
She grew up in a world of unspoken rules.
Do your chores. Don't ask about the locked room.
Don't talk about dreams.
The Varas gave her food, schoolbooks, and shelter.
But never warmth. Never question.
Never love.
She didn't mind.
Because she had her own rules:
Don't speak to ghosts.
2. Don't react in front of others.
3. Never look twice.
Because if you look twice… they know you see them.
But the ghosts were always there.
At school, she sat in the back of the classroom where the boy with no eyes liked to crouch under the desks.
On the playground, she avoided the corner where the girl in the red coat whispered secrets into the sandbox.
She learned not to blink.
She learned to lie.
The other kids thought she was strange.
The teachers thought she was brilliant.
But no one ever thought she was afraid.
Until one day, at six years old, she told her teacher about the dead lady who stood behind her desk.
They sent her to a psychiatrist.
The pills made her dreams vanish.
But the ghosts didn't care.
They came anyway.
By the time she was twelve, Ayla had perfected her silence.
Her heart was a locked room.
Her eyes, polished stone.
She was the kind of child who always knew when someone had died in a house, even if the air was freshly painted and the carpets replaced. The energy hung heavy. Sadness had fingerprints.
And sometimes, if she stared long enough, she could still see them walk by.
That was her life.
Until the rainy night, she saw the man under the streetlamp.
And for the first time since her mother's death… she chose to break her rule.
End of chapter 2