Page 59 of The Threads Between

I reached for it instinctively—wanting to catch smoke, to hold ash, to restore what was already gone.

But the thread pulled me onward. Insistent as gravity.

Save him, not the fragments.

More memories streamed past.

August in Oxford before the corruption. Walking through streets painted autumn-gold, books under his arm, whole and warm and alive. The image fractured as I watched—glass spider-webbing, then shattering, pieces scattering into the dark where they dissolved completely.

Another memory. Closer now. Recent enough to burn.

Us.

The study. Me arguing with him, pushing him about letting Mira go. His control fracturing piece by piece as I refused to back down. The moment I’d said, “And yet, you haven’t walked away.”

How he’d seen me in that moment—standing there defiant, chin tilted up, firelight catching copper in my hair. Everything he shouldn’t want and couldn’t stop wanting. The war behind his eyes as he’d fought himself and lost.

The moment his restraint had shattered completely. His mouth crashing into mine. Desperate, demanding, beyond reason. How I’d tasted to him. How my hands had felt fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer. The sound I’d made when he’d lifted me onto the desk.

I stopped moving.

The memory hung there, translucent and dying. His face blurring at the edges. My own features dissolved. The feeling of his hands, the taste of him, the sound he’d made when I’d pressed closer—all of it curling inward, turning to smoke.

He’s forgetting this. Forgetting us.

“No.” I tried to catch it. Pour my restoration magic into the dying image.

The memory seared against my grasp.

Let it go.

I forced my hands to open. Watched it dissolve completely—his face becoming shadow, my own disappearing, until there was nothing left but the echo of his heartbeat against mine.

Gone.

The thread dragged me forward. Deeper.

More fragments floated past. His teenage years. Quiet evenings reading by firelight. The first time he’d seen his father unravel someone. The horror that had moved into him then and never quite left.

And threaded between the larger memories—me.

Small moments I’d never known mattered. How I’d argued with Elias at dinner, spine straight and voice clear, refusing to be dismissed. The sound of my laugh. A glance. A touch. Gestures so small I hadn’t known he was collecting them.

All of them dying now. All of them ash.

The tunnel narrowed. Darkness pressed closer, thick as drowning. Then it opened, into nothing.

Not a room, not a space—just void. The place where August should have been, hollowed out and left empty.

I stood at the threshold, the thread still clutched in my consciousness. It led forward into that emptiness, glowing steady, insisting it was connected to something.

“August?” My voice didn’t echo. The void swallowed sound like it swallowed everything else.

No answer.

I stepped forward. The thread should end here. Should lead to him.

But there was nothing. Just endless black and the thread pulling me in circles—or maybe straight lines. Impossible to tell when there were no walls, no landmarks, nothing but dark and dark and dark.