Chrometide Wraith

Field account

The hotel lobby held a foot of seawater and a thousand pieces of itself. Chrome columns, broken elevator doors, mirrored bar shelves: every surface showed a guest walking behind us. He wore a dinner jacket full of tide and had no face beyond whatever room he reflected. We turned together. Nothing. We turned back, and Sima's sleeve opened from shoulder to wrist. The Chrometide Wraith slid out of a brass luggage cart, struck, and poured through the wake of its own motion into the elevators. It never crossed a dull surface. Each attack began in polish and ended in water, so we dirtied the lobby with fire-extinguisher powder until only one silver column remained. The Wraith appeared there unwillingly, crowded by all its lost reflections. Sima struck the column instead. When it buckled, the ghost collapsed into an ankle-deep wave that smelled of cologne and deep seawater.

Observed behavior

A Chrometide Wraith circles at the edge of vision and attacks the person who checks behind most often. It wants recognition but punishes attention, a contradiction that makes its hunts feel personal. The spirit moves from reflection into thin water, cuts once, then retreats before the surface settles. It polishes chrome with its sleeves and floods rooms to connect otherwise separated mirrors. A Wraith will pause before a photograph of its former face, although presenting the wrong identity sends it into a frenzy. Powder, soot, algae, and rough cloth reduce its available routes. In unreflective darkness it remains trapped inside the last surface it occupied.