My lungs are on fire.
I rip up from the pillow, fingers clawing at my chest, mouth open on a sound that never fully forms. Air drags in like shards of glass. The room reeks of cold sweat and something metallic that coats my tongue, as if I've been biting pennies in my sleep.
For a moment I am still there.
Rain frozen in midair.
Ash falling like snow.
A door that breathes.
His eyes.
I blink—hard. Once, twice—like I can scrub the image off my retinas.
I'm in my bedroom.
My nightshirt is plastered to my skin, the sheets beneath me damp and clinging like a second suffocating layer. My heart hammers so loud it feels like it's inside my skull, searching for a rhythm it forgot.
Thunder rolls somewhere far away, low and dragging. The old house settles with a tired groan, wood and nails shifting like bones. Lightning flashes and bleaches the room bone-white for half a second, and all the familiar shapes—the dresser, the bookshelf, the chair with a week's worth of clothes on it—look wrong, like they're props someone arranged to convince me I'm safe.
It was a dream.
It was just a dream.
My body doesn't believe that.
My heart keeps racing like it missed the memo, hammering against my ribs in uneven bursts. Each breath feels shallow, unsatisfying, like I'm only pulling in half the air I need.
I press my feet flat to the floor, grounding myself in the chill of the wood. The sensation barely registers. My toes feel distant—attached, but not entirely mine.
The room feels tilted.
Not visibly. Just enough that I have to concentrate to keep my balance. I rest a hand on the edge of the mattress, knuckles whitening as another wave of dizziness rolls through me.
This part is new.
Usually, when I wake up, the fear fades first. The images linger, but my body settles. This time, it's the opposite — my mind insists I'm safe, while my nerves scream that I'm lying.
I swallow hard, throat tight, and force myself to sit there until the tremor in my hands slows.
Count the breaths.
Name five things you can see.
Four you can touch.
The grounding tricks work.
Mostly.
But beneath them, something hums — a low, constant vibration in my chest that doesn't match my heartbeat. Like an echo that hasn't finished arriving.
Rain slaps the window by the foot of my bed in frantic, mocking rhythms. Each drop hits like a reminder: you were just out here. You were in the storm. You died.
I press my palm over my sternum, half expecting to feel a mark where his hand hovered—where he tugged at whatever thread he saw inside me.
Nothing.
Just clammy skin. A frantic heartbeat. And the tremor in my fingers that always lingers after these dreams—like some part of me is still gripping something invisible, terrified to let go.
The nightmare clings harder than it should.
Not the way normal nightmares fade when you get coffee and daylight. These don't fade. They sit behind my eyes all day like an unfinished sentence.
I swallow, throat tight.
I used to have normal nightmares—showing up to class naked, teeth falling out, the usual trauma buffet. But these—
These leave echoes.
Sometimes…they leave headlines.
My breath comes in short, shaky pulls. My chest feels cinched, like a belt of iron tightened while I slept.
And from somewhere buried under panic, that voice coils up again—an echo of words I shouldn't remember.
Blood…binding where gods had cut.
Threads tearing, sewing themselves back together.
I hug my arms around myself and shiver hard enough my teeth click.
"Okay," I tell myself. My voice comes out rough. "No more chocolate anything before bed. Ever."
Mom always said sweets late at night cause nightmares.
This isn't sugar.
The red digits of my clock glare: 5:02 A.M.
Too early. Too late. That gray hour where dreams still have claws in you and ordinary life hasn't fully remembered how to exist.
My yellow fluffy slippers peek out from under the bed like traitors hiding in the one place I never look.
I snort, breathless. "Real helpful, guys."
I slide my feet into them, peel the sweaty nightshirt away from my skin, and yank it off with a grimace. I rip the damp sheets off the mattress and throw them into the already-terrifying Laundry Mountain.
Laundry Mountain stares back like a judgmental roommate.
"Yeah, yeah," I mutter. "I see you."
The mirror above my dresser catches me as I pass.
I stop.
For a second, I don't recognize the girl staring back.
Her eyes are too wide. Pupils blown. Bruised shadows pressed underneath them like fingerprints. Her skin looks washed out, almost waxy in the lightning flashes. Her blonde hair hangs damp and tangled around her face like she slept through a hurricane.
I lift my hand.
So does she.
Proof of life.
"Still here," I whisper. "Still me."
The doubt doesn't budge.
There's something hollow behind my gaze, like someone hid something important inside my skull and drew a curtain over it.
I flip on the bathroom light and wince at the glare. The pipes squeal when I twist the shower handle, protesting the hour. I wait until steam fogs the glass, then step into water so hot it almost hurts.
The shower is my favorite lie.
Needles of heat hammer my skin, washing away sweat, washing away cold, washing away the metallic taste and the ghost of ash I swear I can still feel on my tongue. I tilt my head back and let the spray pound my face and neck, breathing in the clean, artificial citrus scent of drugstore shampoo.
The sound fills the tiny room, thick and loud.
For a few minutes, it's almost enough to drown everything else.
Almost.
Because my mind replays the nightmare anyway. It always does. Like it thinks if it watches it enough times, it can find the frame where I made the wrong choice.
The details refuse to stay contained.
They leak into everything.
When I close my eyes, I don't just see the crash—I feel it in my joints, a phantom ache that blooms along my shoulders and down my spine. My collarbone throbs dully, even though I know it's intact.
I touch it anyway.
My fingers hesitate just before contact, bracing for pain that never comes. The absence unsettles me more than the ache would have.
There's a lag in my thoughts, like my brain is buffering. Simple decisions take too long—stand up or sit down, turn left or right. The delay is subtle, but it's there, stretching each moment thin.
I catch myself staring at nothing, seconds slipping past unnoticed.
That scares me.
I've always been good in a crisis. Clear. Focused. The girl who stays calm while everyone else panics. This fuzzy, half-present version of me feels like a stranger wearing my skin.
The name surfaces again—not spoken, not heard—just present.
Aetheria.
It doesn't feel intrusive.
It feels remembered.
I press my palm flat to my sternum, breathing through the tightness there, and the pressure eases just enough to let me move again.
Not healed.
Just…functional.
Which somehow feels worse.
I slap my palm against the tile, not hard enough to hurt. Just hard enough to sting.
"Why?" I whisper. Then louder, like the water might actually answer. "Why this? Why me?"
The water keeps falling.
It draws lines down my skin that look like they want to be threads.
Sometimes the dreams are distant disasters—places I've never been, faces I don't know. A volcanic cloud devouring a seaside town. A ferry deck with laughing athletes who never come home.
I wake up, write them down, and then—days later—watch them crawl onto the news like the world is copying my homework.
This last week, though?
They aren't distant.
They're in my car. In my chest. In my mouth.
Saying names that don't belong to this life.
I stay under the spray until the water cools and goosebumps pebble my arms. Then I shut it off and step out, wrapping a towel tight around myself like fabric can hold a person together.
Steam rolls across the mirror. I swipe a circle clear.
The girl in the glass looks back.
Still me.
Still not.
Her eyes are empty and too full at once, like someone reached inside her and moved furniture around without asking.
"Get it together," I tell her. "You have class. You have a life. You are not a fracture. You are not a question."
She doesn't argue.
It doesn't help.
My desk looks like a crime scene.
Not murder.
Obsession.
Journals stacked in precarious towers, spines cracked, pages bristling with sticky notes and loose paper. Pens and highlighters spilling out of a mug. The top notebook lies open where I left it, my pen still wedged into the coil like it gave up trying to escape.
I drop into the chair and drag the journal closer.
Page after page of cramped handwriting stares up at me—fires, storms, faces. Phrases I wake up with lodged like splinters in my skull.
There's a page dedicated to the ash-cloud dream. My sketch of it. The way the air turned dark at noon.
Below it: three college athletes on a ferry deck, arms slung around each other, sun in their hair.
They disappeared three days later.
My stomach twists.
I flip forward.
The most recent pages are all him.
Rough sketches: the angle of a jaw, the shadow of a hood, the suggestion of a mouth that once knew how to smile and forgot. I never get his face right.
But I always draw the eyes.
Too bright. Too calm. Too old.
I trace one of the incomplete sketches, fingertip following the line of his brow.
"Who are you?" I whisper.
Ink doesn't answer.
My phone buzzes against the desk.
I jump like I've been shot and snatch it up.
NEW MESSAGE: CASSIE.
Her contact name still has the little chess piece emoji Shelby added months ago—back when it was funny and not…eerily accurate.
Cassie: Did you drown?
I stare at the words for a second too long.
Me: In what context
Her reply is instant.
Cassie: Storm.
I flick my gaze to the window. Rain is steady but not dramatic. Last night was clear.
My fingers hover.
Me: We had a storm last night
The typing bubble appears. Disappears. Appears again.
Cassie: Not here.
A chill crawls down my spine like a hand.
I start to type, So where exactly did you see me drown— and delete it. Cassie never answers like a normal person when she's in this mode.
Me: Couldn't sleep. Nightmare again.
"Nightmare again" is uselessly vague.
Cassie has never demanded details.
I've never volunteered.
Cassie: You woke up breathing.
I freeze.
Me: Yes, yes I did.
Long pause. The typing bubble flickers twice, like she's rewriting reality mid-sentence. Then nothing.
My pulse eases, just a fraction.
Of course.
She's weird, not omniscient.
Still—my skin doesn't fully relax.
Cassie: Drink water. No summoning. See you on campus. No summoning.
I stare at the repeated line.
The first time Cassie found me after a nightmare, I'd been sitting alone in the library stairwell, palms up, breathing like I was trying not to drown. No candles. No herbs. No circle.
Just me.
She'd sat beside me and said, calm as weather: "Try not to call anything when you're scared. They don't always know the difference between a prayer and a door."
I didn't tell her about the scroll. Or prophecies. Or the name that isn't mine.
I didn't have to.
Cassie asks questions that sound like answers.
I toss my phone onto the bed before I can spiral and dress on autopilot.
Jeans. Tank top. Hoodie. The holy trinity of pretending you're fine.
Outside is humid and heavy—Georgia air that clings to your skin like a second shirt—but Mercy's buildings are always freezing, like the entire campus is personally sponsored by a vengeful ice god. Layers are survival.
Downstairs, the kitchen is mostly dark except for the under-cabinet light Mom leaves on. A small square of yellow makes the whole house feel less hollow.
A note waits on the counter in her hurried, spiky handwriting:
Love you.
Waffles in the microwave.
—Mom
There's a coffee ring in the corner and a faint mascara smudge near the bottom. She's already at the hospital, stitching other people back together before the sun has decided if it's coming up.
I open the microwave and my mouth does something dangerously close to a smile.
Waffles. The good kind—thick, deep pockets that hoard syrup like treasure.
I reheat them, drown them in maple, and inhale a bite while the TV murmurs from the living room.
"…two athletes from Florida University are still missing after a weekend trip to—"
My head snaps toward the screen.
Grainy photos. Two young men, arms slung around each other, grinning like they don't know the universe is taking inventory.
My fork freezes halfway to my mouth.
"…third disappearance this week…"
Waffles turn to paste in my throat.
I saw them.
On a ferry.
Laughing.
Last week.
"Don't," I tell myself under my breath. "Not now."
The microwave beeps.
Outside, a car horn hits a familiar double-honk—sharp, impatient, exactly one person.
Shelby.
I shut off the TV so fast it clicks off mid-sentence, shove the rest of the waffles into a napkin, grab my bag, and bolt out the door before the reporter can put another name in my mouth.
Shelby's car is a blue volkswagen beetle convertible that sounds like it runs on rage and vanilla iced coffee. Pop music thumps loud enough to rattle loose change in the cup holder.
She leans over to shove the passenger door open as I jog down the steps, braids piled into a lopsided bun.
"There she is," she says, grinning. "Sleeping Beauty rises from the dead."
"Please don't say 'dead' before eight a.m.," I mumble, sliding in.
Shelby's grin flickers when she really looks at my face. "Nightmare again?"
"Just one," I say. "The deluxe edition."
"Same…theme?"
"Yeah." My eyes lock on the road ahead. "Same crash. Same door. Same charming cameo from my subconscious."
Shelby's voice drops. "Same guy?"
My pulse trips.
I shrug too hard. "He's just…a stress hallucination."
"Uh-huh." She doesn't argue. "Your stress hallucination needs to start paying rent."
She pulls away from the curb, and Lindsey Isle slides past—sleepy porches, wet lawns, neighbors who have watched us grow up and will absolutely die with our secrets in their mouths.
It feels like a Normal Morning.
If you ignore the fact that my dreams are making the news.
Campus was blooming too fast, like it didn't know when to stop.
Classes blur.
Lecture halls. Fluorescent lights. Professors droning about models and molecules and myth. My notes start normal and then drift into words that don't belong:
threshold
binding
door
By second period, the margins of my notebook are full of spirals that turn into symbols my hand should not know.
The carved lines slide from my pen like I'm tracing something burned into me.
On the walk between buildings, my phone buzzes.
CASSIE: Hall B stairwell. Third landing. Two minutes.
I could ignore it.
I don't.
Hall B is old—high ceilings, cracked tiles, stairwells that echo like they've been hoarding secrets since the sixties. I climb.
Cassie is exactly where she said she'd be.
Sitting on the third landing, back against cinderblock, legs stretched out, ankles crossed. Calm as if she's waiting for a bus and not…me.
Her eyes are closed.
"Hey," I say softly.
Her eyes snap open—and there's that flicker of recognition that always feels older than our friendship. Like she's seen me like this before.
"You're late," she says.
I glance at my phone. "I'm literally a minute early."
"Still late."
She says it like a verdict.
I sink down beside her. The concrete chill bleeds through my jeans.
"What did you see?" I ask.
She considers the question, then answers a different one.
"You woke up too fast," she says. "Your soul hasn't caught up yet."
"That's…exactly the creepy level of helpful I expected."
Her mouth twitches like she's fighting a smile.
"You smell like storms," she adds quietly.
I stiffen. "We didn't even have one last night."
"Not here."
Same answer. Same chill.
Cassie pins me with a steady look, those clear hazel eyes making me feel too visible. "Did you dream again?"
"Yeah."
"Same players?"
"Truck. Door. Guy with the eyes. Die horribly in stereo. The usual."
"Did you hear a name this time?" she asks, too casual.
The word burns behind my teeth.
Aetheria.
I swallow it.
"No," I lie.
Cassie studies my face—not like she's trying to catch me, but like she's watching an equation fail.
"You keep waking up," she says, "which means you're not where they want you yet."
A cold thread slips under my skin. "Who's 'they'? The bad guys? The gods? The universe? Admissions?"
Cassie tilts her head. "Does it matter?"
"Yes," I hiss. "It really does."
"I don't see labels," she says. "Just directions."
"And what direction am I going?"
She looks past me, up the stairwell, as if the air has an answer written on it.
Then: "Toward something you can't come back from."
I let out a laugh that sounds like it belongs to someone else. "Fantastic."
She unscrews her thermos and holds it out. Steam curls up—peppermint and something faintly floral.
"Drink," she says. "It helps hold you in your body."
"I am in my body."
Her brows lift.
"Mostly," I mutter, and take the sip.
It burns. The sting anchors. Heat threads down into my chest like someone tightening a knot.
Cassie leans her head back against the wall, eyes on the railing above us.
"Don't write their names down," she murmurs.
"Whose names?"
"The missing," she says. "Don't put them on paper. Ink sticks. So do promises."
My stomach twists, remembering my journal.
"Too late," I say quietly.
Cassie hums, like someone noting a result.
"And the door?" she asks.
My heart stutters. "What about it?"
"Don't open it."
"You say that like it's optional."
For the first time, something like sympathy flickers in her gaze.
"It was," she says. "For a while."
A chime sounds faintly down the hall. My next class.
"I have to go."
"I know." She twists the lid back on. "Don't summon," she reminds me as I stand.
"I'm not summoning anything."
"You're thinking about it," she says. "Thinking counts."
I pause. "Cassie… if you see something really bad about me—you'd tell me, right?"
She looks at me for a long moment.
Then she lies, softly and clean.
"Of course."
By the time Delmont Café rolls around, my smile is glued on and cracking at the edges.
The walk there should clear my head.
It doesn't.
The sky is low and gray, like the world forgot how to finish coloring itself in. The air clings to my skin, thick and damp.
Halfway down Main Street, something catches my eye.
A black pickup idling outside the package store.
Sleek. Shiny. Wrong.
The paint looks wet even though it's dry, dark enough to swallow reflections. The windows are tinted almost black.
The engine's low purr vibrates through the sidewalk like distant thunder.
My stomach drops.
It's not the same truck, I tell myself. Trucks are common. Black is a color.
Except the air around it feels denser.
Like standing under a storm cloud nobody else can see.
My steps slow without permission.
If I get closer, maybe I'll see the license plate—local tags, normal numbers, proof my brain is being dramatic.
Maybe it's just metal and coincidence.
My body doesn't buy it.
I drift toward it, drawn by that awful curiosity people have at car wrecks. The closer I get, the louder my heartbeat gets until it drowns traffic.
The glossy paint warps the world into strange shapes—houses bending, passing cars smearing—
And for one heartbeat, in the reflection—
eyes.
Pale. Steady. Focused on me.
"Angela!"
Shelby's voice cleaves reality open.
I jerk so hard it hurts. Her car squeals into a spot near the café, music blaring, wipers squeaking like complaints.
She hops out, waving a to-go cup like a trophy. "Stop flirting with strange vehicles and come on. I got you coffee."
I tear my gaze away from the truck and force a laugh that sounds like it's borrowed. "Just admiring…capitalism."
Shelby snorts. "That's the saddest lie I've ever heard."
I don't look back.
Inside Delmont, it's packed—students clustered around tables, laptops open, textbooks spread like offerings. The espresso machine hisses. Milk steamers whine. The air smells like coffee and sugar and cinnamon and warmth.
It should be comforting.
Today it feels like a blanket that's a little too heavy.
Shelby leads us to our booth and shoves a drink into my hand. "Triple shot. Splash of caramel. No whipped cream, because you pretend you're not a dessert person."
"Bless you," I mumble, sipping.
Warmth spreads down my throat and anchors me for about three seconds before the static buzz starts behind my eyes again.
Shelby starts talking—Masquerade planning, dress drama, Evan's inevitable emotional collapse. I try to listen. I do.
But the café noise smears into a single hum.
My vision tunnels.
I focus on tiny anchors: steam curling off a mug; the indentation of my pen against my finger; light refracting through the pastry case into miniature stars.
Not here. Not now.
Shelby catches me zoning out twice.
The third time, she doesn't tease.
She leans her shoulder into mine—quiet, steady.
Anchoring.
A shadow falls across the table.
"You two look like a before-and-after studying meme," Cassie says.
I jump.
She stands there like she's always been there, book tucked under one arm, thermos in the other, eyes flicking from me to Shelby like she's reading a chart only she can see.
"You're late," Shelby complains, scooting over so Cassie can slide in.
"I'm early," Cassie says. "You're on a different timeline."
Shelby groans. "Your time jokes break my brain."
Cassie's gaze settles on me.
"You ate," she says.
Not a question. A fact.
Her eyes flick to the syrup-stained napkin sticking out of my bag.
"Yeah," I say. "Waffles."
"Good." Cassie sits. "You stay anchored better when you eat."
I bristle. "I am anchored."
Her eyes drop to my hands.
My fingers are trembling around my cup.
I curl them tighter. "Mostly," I mutter. "Regular amount of dissociation for a Tuesday."
Shelby waves a hand. "She's been weird lately. Weird-er. Nightmares. Visions. Dramatic pacing. Fix her."
"Seer," Cassie corrects softly. "Not witch."
Shelby rolls her eyes. "Fine. Seer her. I'm going to pretend the solution is water and less caffeine."
She leans close to me. "Please don't explode anything before the Ball. I want nice pictures."
"I make no promises," I say.
Shelby beams. "Bathroom. If they call a caramel macchiato, grab it—it's mine. If anyone in a black hoodie walks in, that's a you problem."
She disappears into the crowd.
Without her, the booth feels smaller. The café feels louder.
Cassie sets her thermos down and traces the condensation ring my cup left behind, following it in slow circles.
"The truck," she says, without looking up. "You shouldn't go closer next time."
My heart stops.
"You saw that?"
"You froze," she says. "You had that look."
"What look?"
"The one you get in dreams," Cassie replies. "Like you're here and not here."
I swallow. "Maybe I was just admiring the paint."
"Sure," Cassie says, like she's acknowledging a lie she doesn't have time to argue with.
She leans back and studies me like a problem that won't stay solved.
"Something's moving toward you," she says. "Been circling. Getting closer."
My skin prickles. "That's sufficiently vague and horrifying."
"It has wheels," she adds.
I stare at her.
"Stop."
She doesn't blink. "Don't put Yes or No in anything that moves."
My blood goes cold.
"Okay," I say tightly. "How about we ban sentences that sound like cursed fortune cookies."
Cassie nods once. "You can still change how you meet it," she says. "That's the only part that isn't nailed down."
"I thought outcomes were fixed."
"They are," Cassie says. "The path is what makes people bleed."
A voice threads through the café noise behind me.
Clear. Close.
"Hello. My name is—"
Right behind my shoulder.
The sound isn't loud, but it lands inside my bones. The voice is unfamiliar and intimately known at the same time, like a song I heard once and then forgot on purpose.
Every muscle in my body locks.
I don't turn.
If I turn and see winter-bright eyes, I'll break.
If I turn and see nothing special, I might break anyway.
"Breathe," Cassie murmurs.
"I am breathing," I whisper.
"You're counting the gaps," she says.
I hadn't realized.
The café swells around me—steam hissing, spoons clinking, someone laughing too loudly—but it all feels distant, muffled, like I'm underwater and the surface is just out of reach.
A chair scrapes behind me.
Slow. Deliberate.
My throat tightens.
I grip the edge of the table, knuckles whitening, holding on like laminate and splinters can keep me in this world.
Cassie's gaze doesn't move. Not from my face.
Her mouth barely parts. "Edge," she says, almost too quiet to hear.
"What?" My voice comes out strangled.
"You're standing on it," she says. "Don't panic. Just decide which way you're going to fall."
Behind me, the air changes.
Not the way it changes when someone leans closer. Not heat, not perfume, not breath.
The absence changes.
Like the space behind my shoulder just…widens.
Like something stepped into it and drank the sound.
The voice doesn't finish the sentence.
It stops mid-word, cleanly cut off.
And then—nothing.
No footsteps.
No shuffling coat.
No apology for bumping into me.
No barista calling the name.
No chair being pulled out.
Just the café continuing as if reality didn't stutter.
My pulse hammers so hard I feel it in my teeth.
Slowly—carefully, like I'm trying not to spook whatever is hunting me—I turn my head.
The aisle behind our booth is empty.
No man. No girl. No stranger with a smile and a name. No one holding a tray. No one pretending to browse pastries. No one mid-step.
Nothing.
But the feeling doesn't lift.
It presses closer, intimate and cold, as if someone is standing an inch behind my spine without casting a shadow.
The hair on my arms rises.
My stomach drops with a sick certainty.
This wasn't a person.
This was a test.
Cassie's eyes flick, just once, past my shoulder—like she's tracking something moving through a place I can't see.
Then she looks back at me and says, flat and final:
"Don't look for it."
My mouth is dry. "Why?"
Cassie doesn't answer right away.
When she does, her voice is barely more than breath.
"Because if you look for it," she says, "it learns you can see it."
And behind my eyes—soft as a fingertip against glass—something whispers, amused and patient:
Soon.