જ⁀➴ ♡

Prologue

It begins the same way every time.

A quiet evening.

A key turning in the lock.

The soft weight of rain against the windows.

You drop your bag by the door and notice it there. A single envelope resting on the coffee table, edges sharp, name written in looping black ink. No return address. No sound in the apartment but your own heartbeat. You tell yourself it’s nothing.

A mistake.

A joke.

But the air already feels different, like someone else has breathed it before you. When you break the seal, the paper smells faintly of roses and smoke. Your name curls at the top. Below it, just one line:

Leave town before midnight. You’re in danger.

You laugh, at first. Then the laugh doesn’t sound like yours. You place the letter down, meaning to forget it.Meaning to carry on. But somewhere in the distance, the city hums like a heartbeat beneath the floor, and for just a moment, the mirror across the room ripples, as though the world on the other side has been waiting. Patient, silent, and familiar.

You don’t see the second envelope yet.

You don’t notice the roses.

You don’t know the promise.

Not yet.

All stories begin the same way.

Yours just remembers that it’s already been told.

The rain had already begun by the time you came home soft and persistent, tracing the windows like fingertips. The city outside was a blur of wet reflections, sirens, and the hush that always seemed to fall before midnight. You slipped off your coat, shaking droplets onto the floor, and noticed it immediately: a letter.

It sat on the coffee table as though it had been waiting for you, edges still crisp, your name written in looping black ink that bled slightly at the curves. No stamp. No return address. Just you. For a long moment, you simply stared at it, heart thudding a little faster than you wanted to admit. You’d been out since morning, your shift, the errands, the quick stop to pick up a cake for tomorrow. No one should have been inside.

You broke the seal.

Leave town before midnight. You’re in danger.

The words were rushed, uneven, the kind of handwriting that trembled with urgency. You frowned, reread it, then exhaled a shaky laugh. Probably your friend, you thought. Or your father trying to be clever; he'd always said your imagination was “too cinematic for your own good.” Still, the paper smelled faintly of smoke and something floral, like wilted roses left too long in a vase. You dropped it onto the table and told yourself to stop being ridiculous.

Upstairs, the shower steamed the small bathroom into a fog. You tried to wash the thought away with lavender soap and hot water, rehearsing casual small talk for dinner tomorrow. You almost convinced yourself it was nothing until you heard it.

A sound.

Soft, deliberate. Coming from your bedroom.

You hesitated at the door, pulse loud in your ears, the chill of the air biting at your wet skin. 

Then you saw them.

A dozen blood-red roses, arranged neatly on the bedspread. Dew clung to their petals like tiny drops of glass. They hadn’t been there before. Beneath them, a note. The paper creamy and smooth, the handwriting elegant and unfamiliar.

Happy Birthday. 

Your hand shook as you set it back down. The scent of roses thickened in the air, dizzying and sweet. When you brushed your fingers along a stem, the thorn bit deep enough to draw blood. You hissed softly, pressing your fingertip to your lips a reflex more than thought.

Then the world tilted.

The lamp flared and dimmed. The floor swayed. Your breath caught as a dizzy warmth flooded your veins, and the bouquet blurred into a smear of crimson before your eyes. You fell back onto the bed. The last thing you saw before the darkness claimed you was the letter edges curling as if from heat and a single petal detaching itself, drifting down like the last beat of a heart.

At first, there was only silence. Not the kind you hear, but the kind that presses against you thick and weightless all at once. When you opened your eyes, the world had no edges. Everything shimmered in that pale in-between light that doesn’t belong to dawn or dusk. The air tasted faintly of rain and something sweeter, like memory.

You were standing, barefoot. The floor beneath you looked like water but felt like glass rippling without ever breaking. Every step you took sent rings of light spilling outward, vanishing into mist.

“Hello?” you called. 

Your voice echoed strangely, stretching farther than it should have, like the sound was searching for someone.

Then you saw it: a faint rectangle of light suspended in the air ahead of you a window, hanging in nothing. On the other side was a bedroom. Not yours. A stranger’s. A young boy, no older than twelve, slept tangled in his sheets, a night-light casting soft gold across his face. You leaned closer. When your fingertips brushed the surface of the light, the glass rippled and suddenly you were inside.

The boy’s dream unfolded around you: a wide field, fireflies swirling in the dark, laughter chasing the wind. He ran past you, chasing a paper lantern, completely unaware of your presence. It was beautiful, impossibly alive. You reached for the lantern, wanting to see what would happen if you touched it 

And then everything changed.

A pull, deep and magnetic, yanked you backward. The dream shattered like ice, scattering into a thousand fragments of color. You fell through them, breathless, tumbling through flashes of other lives: a woman crying beside a hospital bed, a man lighting a cigarette on a balcony, a girl dancing alone in a studio, until you stopped.

This dream was different. 

Quieter.

Older.

You found yourself standing in an abandoned garden. Moonlight dripped from twisted vines. A marble fountain stood cracked and dry, filled with rose petals long turned to dust. And there by the fountain someone stood waiting.

A man.

He was half-shadow, half-light, face obscured beneath a hood, but somehow you knew he was looking at you. You could feel the weight of his gaze, not curious, not hostile, but… familiar.

“You found it again,” he said softly. 

His voice was low, almost reverent. 

“I didn’t think you would.”

You froze. 

“Do I… know you?”

He stepped closer, the sound of his boots stirring the dust. 

“You will,” he murmured. 

“You always do.”

You tried to move, to ask what he meant, but the world was already fading, colors leaching out, the air turning thin and bright.

“Wait” you gasped. 

“Who are you?”

His answer was almost lost to the unraveling dream, a whisper caught between heartbeats:

“The one who never stopped looking for you.”

And then you woke to darkness the scent of roses thick around you, your fingertip still bleeding.

You didn’t actually wake. Not truly.

Instead, the light shifted. Softening from gold to grey, and you found yourself standing where you had fallen. The garden was still there, though changed. The air hummed faintly, alive with something unseen. Dawn or what passed for it brushed the horizon with silver. You turned slowly, realizing the fountain now held water again, dark and still as glass. When you looked down, your reflection wasn’t your own. The girl in the water looked like you, but not quite hair longer, eyes a little older, as if she had lived a hundred lives while you weren’t looking. Around her wrist glimmered a faint red thread, so fine it could have been light itself. And as you stared, it tugged.

A whisper rippled across the air, almost like a heartbeat. You followed it, barefoot across the overgrown path. The garden seemed endless now, winding through arches and corridors of ivy that sighed when you passed. Somewhere ahead, a piano was playing. You moved toward the sound, drawn by it. The melody was slow, hesitant, aching like someone remembering a song they’d only ever heard in a dream. It led you to a long corridor lined with mirrors, each fogged over except for one.

In that one mirror, he stood.

The man from before. The hood gone now, his face pale as moonlight. Shadows gathered at his feet, but his eyes were the only thing that seemed alive: dark, searching, tired. He didn’t speak at first. Just looked at you, as if trying to memorize you.

“I thought you were gone,” he said finally, voice roughened by something that wasn’t quite relief. 

“It’s been… longer than I can measure.”

You swallowed, throat dry. 

“Who are you?”

He smiled small, sorrowful. 

“The one who waited too long.”

“Why do you know me?” you asked. 

“I don’t remember”

“You will.” 

His reflection reached for you. 

The glass trembled, rippling outward like disturbed water. 

“The thorn wakes what was buried. The roses remember what love forgets.”

You blinked, stepping closer. 

“What does that mean?”

But the mirror had already begun to crack. Thin lines crawled across the surface, branching like veins. He pressed his palm flat to the glass, desperate.

“Find me before you wake.”

The sound of shattering echoed through the garden. The piano stopped. The air filled with falling petals hundreds, thousands until everything was red and weightless.

You spun, blinded by the color, reaching out for him, for something solid 

And then the world folded in on itself, collapsing into the faint pulse of a heart that wasn’t yours.

The world folded and then unfolded again.

When you opened your eyes, the garden was gone. The air shimmered with the smell of salt and rain, and you stood on a shoreline that seemed carved from light. Waves rolled in silence, breaking into sparks where they met the sand. You could feel it now the same red thread at your wrist, warm against your skin, humming faintly with every breath. You followed its pull to the water’s edge, and when you stepped forward, the sea didn’t swallow you. 

It opened.

You sank through the surface and fell not down, but through. Into another dream. You landed in a cathedral made entirely of glass. Moonlight streamed through fractured windows, refracting into a thousand shifting colors that moved like ghosts. Rows of empty pews stretched endlessly ahead, and at the far end stood a single figure, back turned.

You tried to call out, but the sound dissolved. Instead, you raised your hand, and the air obeyed shards of glass lifted, swirling into constellations above you. 

You gasped softly. 

It was you. 

You could change this place.

With a thought, the colors deepened; a thought more, and the windows reshaped into a garden.

His garden. 

You smiled despite yourself. The realization was intoxicating, this world bent for you, breathed for you. But then the music began again. 

The piano, faint at first.

And something in the air resisted.

You turned. 

At the far end of the cathedral, the glass flickered and through it, you saw a vision not your own. A girl in a red dress, running through a field of dying roses. The boy behind her, reaching out, calling her name. The girl looked back. Your face, younger, radiant, laughing and then everything shattered into light.

You fell again.

Now a forest. The trees whispered in languages you almost remembered. Your hand brushed the bark, and it pulsed faintly, like it had blood beneath it. You thought light, and the forest obeyed glowing softly with thousands of fireflies. You thought of a path, and one appeared beneath your feet. But when you thought door, nothing happened.

The red thread tightened around your wrist, tugging you toward a clearing ahead. And there, through the glow, you saw him again. He was seated beneath a dead tree, head bowed, his hand trailing in the water of a small pond that reflected no sky. He didn’t see you, not yet. The sight of him filled you with something you couldn’t name.

You whispered, “This isn’t my dream.”

And the forest answered, 

“No. It’s ours”.

He looked up. 

His eyes found you instantly, recognition flickering like fire through his expression.

“You shouldn’t be here yet,” he said softly. 

“Not until you remember what you asked me to do.”

Your breath caught. 

“What did I ask?”

His gaze drifted to your hand to the faint light of the thread. 

“To find you. Every time you forget.”

The forest began to fade again, colors bleeding to grey. You reached for him, desperate. 

“Please tell me who you are.”

But his outline blurred, and the sound of his voice came from everywhere at once, fading like a heartbeat into silence:

“The dream bends for you, but not the truth.” 

You woke inside another dream, smaller this time, fragile. A child’s bedroom. You recognized the wallpaper, the cracked nightstand, the stack of storybooks. This one wasn’t bending for you either. On the floor sat the girl from the vision. You, years younger. She was cutting the petals off a rose, whispering the same word again:

“Promise.” 

The word echoed through the walls until everything around you splintered again. Every dream collapsing, memories clawing their way through the cracks. And somewhere in the spaces between, the man’s voice murmured once more:

“Find me before you wake.”

The next time you opened your eyes, you already knew where you were. The stillness, the silver air felt like slipping back into a familiar ache. You stood in the middle of a blank plane, nothing but soft light stretching to the horizon. For the first time, you didn’t panic. You inhaled slowly, closed your eyes, and thought.

A door.

The world quivered, and a door appeared. Black wood, ornate handle, the faint scent of smoke clinging to its frame. You almost laughed from the shock of it. When you pushed, the hinges gave way like silk, and a city unfurled before you. Skyscrapers made of mirrors rose out of fog, reflecting skies that didn’t exist. Streets curved like ribbons. Lanterns hung in the air with no strings. The dream bent beneath your thoughts, eager to please. You walked, barefoot on wet pavement, the red thread at your wrist trailing faintly behind you like a line of light. It tugged you down a narrow alley. You turned a corner, and the buildings shifted again glass giving way to brick, the smell of rain turning to candlewax.

You were standing in front of a bookstore you used to visit as a child. The sign above the door still read Eleanor’s Pages, though you hadn’t seen it in years. You hesitated only a moment before stepping inside. The bell over the door chimed softly a sound so ordinary it almost broke you. The shelves were endless, taller than they should have been, and the air shimmered faintly, as if time itself were breathing here. You thought light, and the lamps brightened. You thought warmth, and the chill receded. But when you thought about him, the shelves trembled and something shifted in the dark.

A single book fell from the highest shelf, landing open at your feet. The pages were blank until ink began to spill across them in slow, deliberate strokes:

You keep looking in the wrong dreams. 

You froze, heart hammering. The letters bled into one another, twisting into something else: a faint outline of a handprint pressed against the page, as if someone were on the other side. You reached for it and the page burned beneath your touch, searing with light. The air cracked, and the bookshop shattered like glass around you. You landed hard, this time in a train station. The ceiling soared above you, filled with doves instead of rafters. The sound of a train echoed distantly, though no tracks were visible.

You tried again, focusing. The station blurred, bending to your will. The tiles turned into water, the benches into rose vines. You could feel the pulse of the dream bending under your control alive, responsive.

“Show me where he is,” you whispered.

The water rippled, spreading outward, forming a single reflection on its surface, his face, brief and flickering like a candle through fog. His lips moved, but no sound came. You leaned closer, desperate to hear. And then his image fractured. The reflection split into countless shards, each showing a different scene: a hand brushing a rose petal, a letter burning, a shadow watching from a doorway.

Every time you reached for one, it slipped away.

You exhaled shakily, frustration and longing coiling together. 

“Why can’t I find you?”

The air shifted a faint whisper curling against your ear:

“Because you already did.” 

You turned, heart pounding, but no one was there. Only the faint scent of roses sharper now, almost metallic and the echo of footsteps retreating into the mist. You fell to your knees beside the water, watching the ripples fade. For the first time, you realized that control meant nothing here. Not over what mattered.

The dreams would give you cities, storms, whole worlds at a thought.

 But they would not give you him.

And somewhere beyond them, you could feel the real world tugging faintly, calling you back. You weren’t ready to go. 

Not yet.

You pressed your bleeding finger to the water. 

“Then show me the truth.”

The surface stilled. And from the depths, the garden began to rise again.

When the garden rose from the water, it wasn’t sudden this time. 

It unfolded. 

Like a memory remembering itself.

The train station dissolved, the mist drawing back to reveal the familiar outline of vines and stone, the broken fountain, the cracked marble paths, the moonlight that seemed to hang motionless in the air. The scent of roses thickened until it felt like breath.

Now, the garden was alive.

The fountain murmured with slow-running water. The ivy pulsed faintly with light, green veins glimmering like constellations. You stepped forward, barefoot, and the petals scattered beneath your feet.

He was there again.

Leaning against the fountain, sleeves rolled to his elbows, as though he’d been waiting forever and had grown used to the ache of it. His eyes lifted when he heard you. This time, there was no shadow between you.

“You found your way back,” he said quietly.

You nodded; afraid your voice might break the illusion. 

“You keep saying that,” you murmured. 

“As if I’ve done it before.”

His gaze softened. 

“You have. Many times.”

You frowned, stepping closer. 

“Then why don’t I remember?”

He exhaled not a sigh, but something heavier, like surrender. 

“Because you chose to forget. Every time.”

Something twisted in your chest. 

“Why would I do that?”

He turned toward the fountain, dipping his hand into the water. It rippled gold beneath his touch. 

“Because this place isn’t a dream,” he said. 

“It’s what’s left.”

Your breath caught. 

The light flickered. 

“What’s left of what?”

He looked at you. then really looked and in his eyes, you saw it: flashes of another life.

A storm.

A house with candles in every window. 

Two hands reaching for each other through smoke. 

And you.

Younger, terrified. 

Whispering something you couldn’t quite hear, before pressing a rose into his palm.

The memory hit like wind. You stumbled. He reached for you, steadying you by the wrist. His touch burned not painfully, but with recognition. The red thread around your wrist pulsed once, and then another thread appeared, trailing from his. The two met, intertwining.

“You asked me to find you,” he said softly. 

“Every time you were lost. Every time you cross back over.”

Your voice trembled. 

“Crossed from where?”

“From the moment you died.”

The words fell into the silence like stones dropped into deep water.

You blinked, shaking your head. 

“No. I’m alive. I have a home, my parents, my birthday”

“The letter. The roses,” he interrupted gently. 

“They weren’t warnings. They were the door opening. The thorn was the key.”

You stared at him, the weight of his gaze unraveling every certainty you had left. 

“So, this” You gestured around. 

“This is…?”

“The in-between,” he said. 

“Where dreams remember the ones who can’t stay.”

Tears pricked your eyes. 

“And you?”

He smiled faintly, something breaking behind it. 

“The one who promised not to leave.”

Your heart twisted painfully. 

“How long?”

He stepped closer, close enough that you could see the faint shimmer of the red thread connecting you. 

“Long enough to forget what it feels like to wake.”

You wanted to reach for him to close that impossible space, but the air began to tremble, edges of the garden unraveling like torn fabric. 

The sky flickered white.

He caught your hand. 

“Don’t fight it,” he said. 

“You’ll wake soon.”

You shook your head, gripping him harder. 

“Not yet. Please, not yet.”

The fountain water rose around you, swirling with petals and light. The last thing you saw was his mouth shaping the same word you’d whispered in the dream before this one, the one from your childhood:

Promise.

You woke to stillness.

The room was dark except for a soft spill of grey light seeping through the curtains. The hum of the city was distant cars sighing past, a siren somewhere far away. For a moment, you couldn’t remember where you were. The air still smelled faintly of rain and roses.

You sat up slowly. Your sheets were tangled, damp with sweat, your pulse still caught in the rhythm of running water. The dream clung to you like smoke, the fountain, the moonlight, him. 

It couldn’t have been real. You told yourself that over and over. But your throat felt tight, your fingers trembling as you reached for the lamp. Light filled the room, warm and ordinary. Everything was just as you’d left it. 

Except there.

On your nightstand.

A single red petal, perfectly fresh, dewed as if plucked only moments ago. It lay beside the first letter, the one warning you to leave now half-burned along its edges. You didn’t remember lighting anything.

Your heart skipped. 

You reached for the petal. It was cold. Real. You turned it over in your hand and froze. A faint thread clung to your wrist, no thicker than a strand of hair, shimmering red in the lamplight. You tried to pull it away, but it didn’t move. It wasn’t tied; it was woven into your skin. The room tilted. You stood too fast, catching your reflection in the mirror across the room. You barely recognized yourself, your hair tangled, eyes too bright, the faint imprint of a rose thorn along your finger still raw and red.

You whispered into the silence, voice barely steady: 

“Was it real?”

No answer. Only the soft rustle of the curtains, the sound of your own breath.

Then, from the corner of your eye, you caught it. 

The smallest thing, almost nothing. 

The mirror behind you flickered. For just an instant, a figure stood there, half-shadow, half-light. 

Watching.

Your breath caught. You turned. 

Nothing.

Only the petal, the thread, and the faint scent of roses that would not fade.

You sank back onto the bed, clutching the petal in your palm until your hand trembled. You thought you heard something then soft, like a whisper carried through glass:

“Find me before you wake”. 

You closed your eyes. The words echoed in the hollow of your chest.

And somewhere deep beneath the quiet, you felt the faintest tug on the thread around your wrist as if someone, somewhere, had just pulled back.

Morning came with no warning.

The sunlight spilling through your curtains looked normal, but the color felt wrong, too pale, too heavy, like it hadn’t been filtered through a sky. You blinked hard and it didn’t change.

The petal was still there. 

So was the thread.

It caught the light when you moved, glimmering faintly before vanishing again, as if it only existed when you remembered it. You tugged once, gently. It resisted. You tried again, harder. It vanished.

Your breath came fast. You checked your wrist. 

Nothing. 

Just skin.

You told yourself it was fine you were overtired, your mind tangled from the strange dream. You showered, dressed, and drank coffee that tasted faintly metallic. The clock said 8:02, though the second hand didn’t move for several heartbeats before catching up.

Outside, the city was too quiet. The streets glistened from last night’s rain, but no one seemed in a hurry. The sound of footsteps came seconds before the people who made them appeared. Conversations lagged a beat behind mouths that already moved.

You blinked and everything snapped back into rhythm.

You decided not to think about it.

At the café, the barista smiled and said, “Happy birthday,” before you could order. 

You froze.

“How did you...?”

He frowned, confused. 

“You told me yesterday. You said your parents were taking you to dinner tonight.”

You didn’t remember that.

When he handed you the cup, your name was written across it in looping black ink, the exact handwriting from the first letter.

You almost dropped it.

You walked out without speaking, heart hammering, the paper warm in your hand. Across the street, a florist’s display caught your eye: rows of red roses in the window. 

You stopped.

In the glass, your reflection blinked and didn’t move again.

The version of you in the reflection turned her headfirst. Her expression was calm. Knowing.

You stepped closer, until your breath fogged the glass. Behind your reflection, in the dim light of the shop, someone was standing.

A man. Head bowed, fingers brushing the petals. And for a moment only a moment the red thread flickered back into sight between you.

Then the light changed, and he was gone.

You stumbled back, colliding with a passerby who muttered something sharp, grounding you in the noise of the street. You looked down at your wrist. No thread. No mark.

But when you raised the cup again, the ink on your name had smeared one word bleeding faintly underneath:

Promise.

By noon, you were convinced you could think your way out of it. Dreams had rules. Reality had rules. All you needed to do was find the seam between them.

You started with the easy things: clocks, mirrors, the tiny rituals of certainty.

The clock in your kitchen read 12:16. 

Your phone read 11:58. 

The oven blinked 12:16. 

When you looked back at your phone, it, too, said 12:16.

You switched them all off, then on again. The numbers didn’t change.

You laughed a thin, startled sound. 

“Okay,” you whispered. 

“Fine. Glitch.”

The word felt like it should fix everything.

You spent the afternoon testing small realities. A pinprick to the fingertip. Pain, blood, ordinary. Cold water on your wrist. Real, wet, sharp. You dropped a glass just to hear it shatter. It did, perfectly, the sound clear and bright.

But the pieces didn’t scatter the way they should have. They fell in a neat circle, edges facing inward, as though the world had arranged them carefully for you.

You stared at them until your pulse slowed. Then you swept them into the trash and kept moving.

By three o’clock, you found yourself at the library. You weren’t sure why. It wasn’t somewhere you went often, but the air inside felt safe lined with the weight of other people’s stories.

You took a seat near the back and opened your notebook, meaning to write everything down: the dream, the thread, the rose, the reflection that blinked. If you could see the pattern, maybe you could undo it.

But when your pen touched the paper, the ink spread on its own, blooming outward in a slow crimson stain. Words you hadn’t written unfurled across the page:

You’re not lost. You’re late. 

You shut the notebook hard enough to echo. Heads turned. You mumbled an apology and left.

Outside, the afternoon light had changed again thicker now, like honey poured over glass. Shadows stretched too long. The world smelled faintly of rain, though the sky was clear.

You passed a little girl skipping rope on the corner. She stopped mid-turn and looked up at you. Her eyes were pale, almost colorless.

“You dropped this,” she said.

You glanced down. Nothing.

When you looked back, she was holding something out to you, a single red petal, curled at the edges.

You didn’t move.

The girl smiled. 

“He said to give it back.”

Before you could ask who he was, a bus roared past. When it cleared, the girl was gone. Only the petal remained, resting on the sidewalk.

You bent to pick it up, hands shaking. The veins in the petal glowed faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat.

For a long time, you just stood there in the golden, wrong light, the city moving in slow motion around you, and whispered to no one:

“I’m awake. I’m awake. I’m awake.”

Time does not pass here. It collects.

He sits by the fountain that never empties, hands resting in the water that remembers every name it’s ever been given. The garden is half-light now, half-shadow, the air quivering at its edges where her world brushes against his. Each time she wakes, the sky here flickers; each time she doubts, the fountain stills.

He feels her before he sees her, the faint tug on the red thread that binds them. It thrums once, twice, then falters. She’s drifting again, caught between believing and forgetting.

“Too close,” he murmurs to the silence. 

“You’re too close this time.”

He stands. The garden bends with him, vines lifting as if to listen. Every petal on every rose trembles. He’s tried to follow her through the cracks before, through mirrors, through the heartbeat of water and glass but her world rejects him like a body rejecting a ghost.

He closes his eyes and reaches outward, past the edge of this place, feeling for the pulse of her reality. It’s faint but steady: a rhythm of footsteps on pavement, the whisper of pages turning, the sound of her breath as she says she’s awake.

“You are,” he says softly, though she cannot hear him. 

“But not where you think.”

Images flicker in the air around him, shards of her day bleeding through. He sees her drop the glass and watches it shatter perfectly inward. He sees her at the library, flinching from the words that bled through the paper. He sees her standing on the sidewalk, clutching the petal he sent her through the child who isn’t real.

Each glimpse costs him something. The garden darkens. The fountain water reddens. The roses begin to wilt, one by one.

He kneels by the fountain again and dips his hand into the water. The surface ripples and shapes her face pale, frightened, luminous. He traces her outline, but his fingers only disturb the reflection.

“Don’t run from it,” he whispers. 

“Not this time.”

The thread flares once around his wrist, tightening enough to draw blood. The sight makes him smile small, bittersweet. It means she still feels the pull.

He whispers a single word into the water, the one that always finds her no matter how far she drifts:

Promise. 

The word trembles through the garden, into the cracks between worlds. He knows she will hear it soon not as a voice, but as a heartbeat beneath her own.

And when she does, the line between their worlds will thin enough for him to follow.

By the time the sky bruised into evening, you were too tired to be afraid. The day had felt stretched thin like the city itself was a film laid over something older and deeper that pulsed beneath it. You told yourself you’d made it through, that a few hours of ordinary darkness would reset everything.

But darkness, it seemed, remembered you.

You lit a single lamp in the living room and left the rest of the apartment unlit. The quiet hummed. The air smelled faintly of roses, though you hadn’t brought any inside. When the refrigerator motor clicked on, it startled you badly enough to spill your tea. 

“Get a grip,” you muttered, wiping the counter. 

“You’re fine. You’re awake.”

Still, the word promise wouldn’t leave you. It slipped into thoughts that had nothing to do with it, into the spaces between your heartbeat. The television whispered static shaped like syllables. Your phone lit with a single notification no sender, only the word again.

You tried to laugh, but it caught in your throat.

You went to your bedroom and found the window half-open. The night air carried a low hum, as though the city were breathing with you. Below, car headlights blurred in the wet street. You leaned out, looking for something. Anything that made sense.

Then you heard it.

Faint. Everywhere.

“Promise”. 

It wasn’t a voice, not exactly. More like the sound of your name if spoken underwater. You pressed your hands over your ears, but the word vibrated through your bones, through the glass, through the filament in the lamp until the light flickered once and steadied again.

On your nightstand, the single red petal quivered.

You whispered, “Stop.”

The air obeyed. The hum ceased. Silence bloomed so absolute it felt wrong.

And in that silence, the mirror across the room fogged over from the inside. Letters formed slowly in the mist:

Find me before you wake. 

Your knees went weak. You reached for the mirror, fingertips trembling. The glass was cold and slick, yet your touch left a perfect print as if the surface were breathing.

Behind the fog, a faint light shimmered: a garden lantern, or maybe a candle. You thought you saw movement, a figure, waiting.

The red thread flickered back to life around your wrist, pulsing in time with your heartbeat.

You whispered the word that had followed you all day, half-plea, half-answer. 

“Promise.”

The mirror pulsed once, light spilling through the cracks like water seeking its way home.

Then the floor shifted. The air bent. And the city outside your window dissolved into petals and rain.

At first, it was only the mirror breathing. A faint, steady pulse beneath the glass, light pushing outward in slow, uneven waves. You told yourself to move. To look away, to leave the room, but your feet refused. The air around you had thickened, syrup-slow, humming faintly in your bones. The reflection swayed like water disturbed by a stone. The outline of the garden rippled through its moonlight, roses, his shape at the fountain. He was close enough that you could almost smell the rain on his sleeves. The word promise echoed again softer now, intimate, coaxing. It came not from the mirror, but from inside you, behind your ribs, in the space your heartbeat used to fill.

You whispered, “Stop. Please.”

The world didn’t.

The lamp flickered again, its glow splitting into two slightly mismatched halves. Your reflection doubled, then tripled, each image lagging behind the real you by a breath. One blinked when you didn’t. The sound of dripping water filled the room, though the floor was dry. You backed away, hand clutching your chest. 

“No. I’m done with this. I’m awake.”

The mirror brightened, showing flashes instead of reflections: the boy in the field, the cathedral of glass, the garden beneath the endless moon. Fragments of every dream, every life you’d wandered through, bleeding into the walls around you. Your books toppled off the shelves, landing spine-up in neat, impossible patterns. The letters on their covers rearranged themselves, spelling one word repeatedly:

Promise.

You pressed your palms to your ears. 

“I don’t want to go back!”

But even as you said it, the thread at your wrist tightened a slow, aching pull. The skin beneath it burned faintly, red light seeping through as if something beneath your skin was remembering itself. You stumbled toward the door, intending to run anywhere, anywhere away from this but the door no longer led to the hallway. The knob turned in your hand, and behind it was only darkness, deep and shimmering like water. The mirror’s light pulsed stronger, flooding the room with soft crimson. You felt the floor tilt, the air bow inward, the scent of roses blooming sharp and sweet as blood.For a heartbeat, you saw both worlds at once, your apartment fading at the edges, and the garden waiting behind the glass. He was there, arm outstretched, mouth moving soundlessly, eyes wide not with triumph but with fear. You clung to the doorframe, nails biting wood. 

“Not yet,” you whispered, tears hot on your cheeks. 

“Please not yet.”

The thread strained, glowing like a vein of fire. You felt it snap tight between your heart and his hand, humming with everything you didn’t say. And for the first time, you realized that the pull wasn’t something outside of you. It was you.

You had called to him first. 

Every time.

The light flared once, brilliant, unbearable 

Then it went out.

Darkness didn’t fall; it thickened. It pressed against your skin like silk soaked in ink, weightless and heavy at once. The air here didn’t move, and yet you could feel it breathing slow, deliberate, ancient.

For a while, you thought you’d gone blind. Then you realized you could see faint threads of light drifting all around you, like veins through the void. Some stretched away into infinity; some looped back on themselves. When you turned your wrist, your own thread glimmered there thin, red, steady running forward into the dark and back into your chest.

You called out. Your voice made no sound, only a tremor through the threads. Each tremor lit another pulse of memory: a candle, a face, a voice saying your name the way no one else did.

The world shivered and reassembled itself in fragments.

You stood in the garden again, though it was made entirely of shadows. The fountain had turned to glass; the roses were black silhouettes edged in faint crimson. Everything felt brittle, like the inside of a forgotten photograph.

He was there, kneeling in front of the fountain. His hands were stained red.

When he looked up, he didn’t look surprised. 

“You came back.”

You hesitated. 

“I didn’t mean to.”

He smiled faintly. 

“You always say that.”

You stared at him at the water in the fountain turning clear again, at the faint hum of your own thread joining with his. 

“I don’t understand. Why did I promise you?”

The garden flickered. The air filled with the scent of smoke and wet stone.

Then you remembered.

Another night, another storm.

You were younger. 

The world was burning at the edges flames swallowing the sky, the river rising, voices calling in panic. He’d been there, pulling you toward the garden’s gate, shouting something you couldn’t hear.

You had turned back, refusing to leave the child clutching your hand, the one who’d tripped, the one who wouldn’t wake. You’d told him to run. He’d refused.

He’d begged you, voice breaking: 

Don’t stay here. Come back to me.

You had pressed your palm to his, the red thread shimmering between you even then, and whispered the word that had bound you both:

“Promise.”

And then you’d stepped into the fire.

The memory burned itself out, leaving only ash and the two of you standing in the half-light garden.

He reached for you now, fingertips ghosting the air just short of your skin. 

“You never broke it. You just forgot why you made it.”

You shook your head. 

“I can’t stay here. This isn’t this isn’t life.”

“No,” he said gently. 

“It’s what remains when life ends and love doesn’t.”

The darkness around the garden began to stir, whispering in a language made of wind and heartbeat. You felt the pull from both sides. One toward the sound of morning, one toward him.

He watched you with eyes that carried centuries of waiting. 

“It’s different this time. The door won’t open again if you go.”

You touched the red thread. It was warm, pulsing faintly. 

“And if I stay?”

“Then you’ll remember everything,” he said. 

“But you won’t wake.”

The fountain between you began to overflow with petals and light spilling out, filling the air.

And somewhere inside the rush of it all, you heard your own voice distant, breaking, calling your name from the other side.

The darkness began to thin, not into light but into layers. Through the black ran threads of faint color warm gold, bruised violet, the familiar dull blue of your bedroom ceiling. The world was trying to rebuild itself, and it hurt.

Each pulse of color was a heartbeat, and with everyone you could feel something tugging at you: your bed, your body, the soft, ordinary gravity of the life you’d left behind. The ache of it filled your chest until you could taste air again, the sharp smell of rain-soaked city stone.

He was still in front of you, standing on the edge of the fading garden. The red thread between you vibrated, stretched thin as spider silk. You felt it straining toward two directions at once toward him and toward the echo of your waking breath.

“You can still go back,” he said. 

His voice was steady, but his hand shook as he reached toward you. 

“If you go now, you’ll forget me. Again. That’s the only way your world will hold together.”

You looked down. The ground beneath your bare feet was becoming transparent, showing flashes of your apartment beneath it: your rumpled sheets, the half-cold tea on the nightstand, the petal lying perfectly still. You saw yourself sleeping there, chest rising, eyelids fluttering.

“Is that me?”

“It’s the piece that never left,” he whispered.

You tried to speak, but the air in your lungs was turning to light. The fountain cracked; petals lifted and burned to ash. The garden was disintegrating around you, each collapse revealing something real behind it: your parents’ voices, the smell of coffee, the hum of your own heartbeat.

Every piece of ordinary life pulled at you, gentle but relentless.

And yet, underneath it all, his presence solid, steady, impossible anchored you here.

“If I wake,” you said quietly, 

“you’ll disappear.”

He shook his head. 

“No. I’ll fade. There’s a difference.”

The light from your world flared, outlining everything in sharp relief: his eyes, the scar along his wrist, the thread burning between you. For an instant you saw both endings: the one where you opened your eyes and the one where you stayed.

In one, the world returned to its right color.

In the other, the air smelled of roses forever.

You stepped back, and the pull toward the living world tightened. Your knees shook with the weight of choosing.

He didn’t move to stop you. 

“If you wake, remember that love doesn’t end when memory does. It just waits.”

The words struck through you like a bell. The garden wavered. The light behind you grew stronger. You turned once more toward it and saw everything it contained: your life, whole and fragile.

The cost of waking wasn’t death.

It was forgetting.

Ending 1

Ending 2

a/n: surprise? I know it's been a really really long time since I've posted to this blog. I haven't really been on Tumblr much honestly, or writing much either. I started my thesis year in September and it been quite the ride. I hope I haven't lost my touch and I hope you enjoy this one!

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