Rain blurred the city like a half-forgotten dream.
Ayla walked through it like a ghost herself—soaked, silent, invisible. The streetlight behind her still flickered, and the echo of the demon's scream rang in her bones.
She had broken her rule.
She had looked. She had acted. She had helped.
She should've felt proud. Or powerful. Or at least relieved.
But all she felt was... watched.
Something had seen her. Something more than the shadow.
For three days, she avoided that street.
Avoided mirrors. Avoided sleep.
She thought maybe it would all vanish again—just another strange moment in a life of strange moments.
But then the man came back.
Not in the street. Not in a vision.
He came to her school.
The principal interrupted math class and called her to the office. Said someone from a "charity foundation" wanted to speak with her. No details.
When she stepped into the hallway, her breath caught.
Damian Rae was standing by the front desk.
No longer shaking. No longer haunted. Dressed in a crisp charcoal suit, a silver tie clip catching the light like a blade.
He looked like a man who owned the world.
But when his eyes found Ayla, they softened—not with pity, but recognition. Respect.
"I wanted to thank you," he said, quiet enough for only her to hear.
"I didn't do it for you," she muttered.
He smiled faintly. "I know. That's why I trust you."
They met again. And again.
First, at a café near the edge of the city. Then, in the shadow of a glass tower his company had just acquired.
He told her the truth, piece by piece.
About the tower built on cursed land.
About his nightmares, his missing days, the voices.
"I lost months of my life. Nearly everything," he said. "Then you looked at me like you saw it all. You knew."
Ayla didn't respond.
She sipped her tea and watched people walk by—never noticing the weeping girl sitting on the bench between them.
"Most people fear what they don't understand," he said. "But you didn't flinch. You saw the thing on my back and you ended it."
"I didn't end it," she whispered. "I moved it."
Damian paused.
And nodded.
Even that truth didn't shake him.
He leaned closer.
"I think we could help each other, Ayla."
Over the next year, their meetings became a pattern.
Never too frequent. Never suspicious.
He brought books: about symbols, temples, forgotten deities, cursed lands, exorcisms across cultures.
She read everything.
He asked questions. She gave answers.
But always on her terms.
No labs. No tests. No priesthoods.
And eventually… he offered her a deal.
One night, in the private rooftop garden of the Rae Global tower, he stood beneath the stars and said:
"Buildings remember what happened inside them. Pain leaves a residue. Death leaves a door open."
Ayla nodded. "And you want to build over them."
"I want to cleanse them first."
He turned toward her, serious.
"Not destroy. Not banish. Just… release. Set right."
A pause.
"I want to fix what other men ruined. And I want you to help me."
She didn't trust easily. Not people. Not offers. Especially not men in suits.
But something in Damian wasn't greedy. It wasn't fake. It was haunted in a different way—by guilt, not ghosts.
So she said yes.
At fourteen, Ayla Serin began cleansing buildings.
Privately. Quietly. Her name never on a single paper.
Damian brought her into old mansions, collapsed hospitals, ancient schools where generations of silence still echoed between the bricks.
And she listened.
She didn't use spells. Didn't chant or burn sage.
She just stood in the heart of each structure, closed her eyes, and called them out.
And one by one, the ghosts answered.
Some angry. Some broken. Some lost.
She spoke to them. Set rules. Drew spirals in chalk and iron dust. Marked doorways with bloodroot.
Sometimes she screamed.
Sometimes she cried.
Sometimes, she had to leave without fixing it.
But most of the time—she won.
And Damian kept his word.
Each time she cleared a space, he offered her a part of it.
A floor. A room. A deed.
He said: "You cleansed it. You own it."
At fifteen, Ayla owned seven apartments and a half-empty art gallery no one dared enter.
By sixteen, she had her first tower.
And nobody knew her name.
But the world watches power—even in the shadows.
And others began to notice.
The men whose buildings wouldn't sell.
The cults that thrived in haunted ruins.
The ghosts who didn't want to be freed.
Not everyone was happy to see her rise.
And somewhere—beneath the earth, in a part of the city no map dares show—something ancient opened its eyes.
It had felt her power.
And it remembered her mother's blood.
End of Chapter 3