I rolled onto my side.
The boy stood over .
His expression hadn't changed. His voice, when it ca, was soft—so quiet I wasn't sure I'd actually heard it.
"She isn't who you think she is."
The words slid under my ribs like a blade pressed, not plunged.
Then he raised his hand.
Ti shattered around us.
But it didn't break. It folded.
The world collapsed inward like a dying breath, and I fell through mory that wasn't mine, and wasn't his—but sohow knew all the sa.
***
I hit the ground hard.
Not stone. Not wood. Sothing between them. My hands scraped across it. Sparks flared. My head rang.
A new space outstretched around —flickering like a filmstrip unraveling too fast. Shapes blinked into view, then vanished. I saw Clara, mid-pulse, her hand outstretched toward a girl I couldn't fully see. Then Konrad, teeth gritted, staring down a version of that wasn't .
Then Erich, braced and bleeding, shouting sothing into smoke.
They were fragnts. Bursts. As if the child had sliced ti into slivers and thrown them at to drown in.
"They don't rember," the body's voice echoed.
He was nowhere. But I felt him everywhere.
"And you don't want to."
I stumbled forward. My hands trembling. Not from fear. From weight. From everything pressing in at once. My own thoughts doubled. My mories stretched thin. A flicker of a foreign country. A flicker of firelight. A girl calling a na I no longer used.
"Stop it," I hissed. "This isn't real."
"Neither is she!" he barked
Ti stopped cold.
"Who?" I asked. "Helene?"
The world paused. Tick. Tick. Tick.
"Shuji is dead."
My knees buckled.
Not because I wanted to believe him.
But because deep down, I already did.
And in that mont, the station reassembled itself around —groaning into its borrowed shape. The benches. The clocks. The dust.
I was back in the main hall.
And standing across from , the boy waited.
I turned—Clara wasn't there. Neither was Konrad, Erich, or Helene. Only the echo of threads I couldn't quite reach. For a second, I thought I was truly alone.
But then he raised his head.
His face was still blank.
But sothing behind it burned.
He raised both hands this ti.
The floor cracked. Ti split. And suddenly I was falling—not through space, but through monts.
***
I landed in a corridor.
Only, it wasn't the station.
It was a hallway flooded with golden light. Paper doors. Tatami floors. The scent of plum trees in bloom.
I knew this place.
Japan. 1869.
My breath caught.
I turned, and saw a version of myself—Ren—standing at the edge of the garden, looking up at the stars.
But his expression was wrong.
Vacant. Cold. Like mory drained of aning.
He turned to .
"You've abandoned her," he said.
Then he disappeared.
The world shattered again.
I blinked—now inside the old dormitory hall at Humboldt. Aged wood, books stacked to the ceiling.
Erich's voice echoed down the hallway.
"Clara?" he called.
She didn't answer.
Only her silhouette—wrong, too still, too clean—stood at the end of the corridor.
"Why didn't you co back for ?" she asked.
Erich stepped forward.
I wanted to yell. To stop him.
But I wasn't there.
I was watching.
The boy's voice returned.
"They rember just enough to hurt. Not enough to heal."
I scread. "Why are you showing this?!"
"To prepare you."
The station snapped back again.
This ti I was kneeling.
Bleeding.
The boy circled —hands behind his back, as if this were a lesson.
"She isn't who you think she is," he repeated.
"She's trying to stall you. To split you. One piece at a ti."
"She?" I asked again. "Helene?"
He didn't answer.
The walls cracked. A pulse of Clara's thread reached —a wave of ti-altering grief. I felt her pain like a cut to the ribs.
Then Konrad. His thread blinked. Stalled. Then surged. He was losing—fast. Holding back. Waiting for sothing that would never arrive.
Then silence.
Then. Journals.
Pages flipping open one by one across the benches around . The sa phrase repeating across them in ink that bled like rain.
You're too late.
You were always too late.
You won't stop it this ti.
The boy raised his hands again.
I had one second.
I moved.
Step. Behind him.
I reached forward—mid breath, patting his head—syncing my thread with his.
I saw everything.
The real Shuji. Laughing beside . Dying beside . A grave unmarked in a ti no one rembered. Helene standing over it.
Smiling.
Then it was gone.
But sothing remained.
A flicker.
A cell, maybe. Or a cage. Not made of stone—but of monts.
A girl sat inside it. Young. Eyes covered. Knees drawn to her chest.
She didn't speak. But the thread around her pulsed weakly, like it was trying to reach sowhere it no longer rembered.
Then her image vanished.
The body gasped.
I gasped.
We separated.
He staggered.
So did I.
"You... see now." he whispered. "She never was."
I looked at him, struggling to breath.
The station warped again.
The lights flickered.
My hands tightened.
The fight wasn't over. It was just beginning.
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