Ember had already seen everything.
She hadn't gone looking. She wasn't snooping, nor had a single doubt crossed her mind. If anything, she'd been desperate for comfort that day—the kind only two people in the world provided: Liam, and her best friend, Mara. Her supposed family.
It had been a garbage morning. She was fired before lunch. Not through any fault of her own, but cruel budget cuts that didn't care about her rent, her bills, or her future. She left the office clutching an empty box, a simmering rage burning beneath the knot of tears she refused to let fall.
What she needed right now was Liam. To anchor herself against his steady presence.
To bury her face in his shoulder and let him tell her everything would be alright. To have someone in this world who cared that she was hurting. To have someone in this wretched world who still gave a damn about her.
She walked straight into his house without knocking, the way she had always done for the last two years.
And then she stopped dead.
It took a full five seconds for the sight to register, but her body went cold instantly. The sounds were the first betrayal: a breathy, disgusting laugh, soft and private. Then a voice that wasn't his. Then Liam's voice, low and hurried. The creak of the couch protesting under a sudden weight.
Then Mara's sickeningly blonde hair... and Liam's traitorous hands... and—
No.
Not them. Never them.
The tears from losing her job vanished. Swallowed by a cold, hard stone of disbelief.
She wasn't screaming or falling apart. She was seething. She stood there, a pillar of rigid fury, her heart not numb, but replaced by a frantic, hammering drum.
Her hands felt like blocks of ice. It felt as if her soul had stepped back, to calculate the damage.
But they saw her.
Her deadly silence shattered their pathetic moment. Mara's face drained white, a guilty portrait of panic. Liam scrambled, jumping up like she'd thrown a bucket of ice water over them.
"Em—Ember—" Liam stammered, his hand reaching out.
She didn't move. She just stared at his hand like a snake.
Then, she took a deliberate step back.
Another.
She turned and walked out. There was no theatrical drama. No shouting. She gave them nothing. Just the steady, slow, utterly damning rhythm of her footsteps echoing through the silence of his house.
She didn't look back.
She didn't need to.
Because if she did, she wasn't sure she could stop herself from walking back in to smash every single thing they owned.
---
Everyone in this miserable town would hear about it. Ember knew the rules. This was the kind of place where a person couldn't whisper a secret without the entire street already knowing the punchline. She hated attention—hated the scrutiny.
And this? This would be a carnival.
Because the gossip wouldn't just be about their cheap, backstabbing affair.
It would be about her.
Poor, pathetic Ember.
The girl whose best friend had her man.
The girl who still had to live here, choked by their sickening pity.
She walked home with a tension that threatened to snap her spine. Her jaw ached from clenching it so tightly.
Confusion and confusion had been replaced by a focused, burning disgust.
She showered, scrubbed her skin until it was raw, as if to wash off the dirt of their shared betrayal. She sat on her bed and the thoughts started, not with despair, but accusation.
How long have I been the joke?
Were they laughing at me?
What did Mara offer him that I didn't?
Did they think I wouldn't find out?
What an insult.
It was hours of silent, cold fury before exhaustion dragged her into a shallow sleep.
And when she woke up, the fire was still there, waiting.
Liam texted her the next day.
"We should talk. Please meet me at the bar tonight."
She stared at the pathetic message for an hour.
Her better judgment told her to block him. To delete his number and cleanse her life of his toxicity.
But the part of her that wanted to look him in the eye, the part that needed to deliver the verdict, whispered: Go. Finish this.
So she went.
---
She walked into the bar with a stiff back and a dry, angry throat, spotting him immediately in a booth by the window. He looked exactly how he should: small, nervous, and utterly worthless.
"Ember," he murmured as she slid into the opposite seat.
She kept her arms folded. "You called the meeting. Talk fast."
Liam swallowed, avoiding her eyes before weakly meeting them. "I'm sorry you saw it that way."
That way.
The casual dismissal was an attack.
"'That way'?" she repeated laughing dryly, her voice a dangerous, flat line. "What other way is there to see the woman I trusted most grinding on the man I was dating?"
"Em, listen—"
"The name is Ember," she interrupted, cutting him off like a wire. "Don't you dare use that stupid nickname tonight."
He winced. "Fine. Ember. I just… I didn't want it to come out like this."
"But you still did it," she said, her voice weighted with finality.
He was silent.
The air between them felt poisonous.
She stared at him, not searching for understanding, but for the fault line in his pathetic excuse. All she saw was cheap guilt.
"How long?" she demanded.
He took a weak breath. "A few weeks."
She laughed, a small, dark sound that held no humor. "And it never crossed your mind to break up with me first? Or did you just like the convenience?"
"You were going through a lot," he pleaded. "I didn't want to make things worse. And Mara—she's not the girl you think she is. She's been the one flirting with me from the start. I tried to ignore it, but—"
"But you're a man and you can't control yourself when the opportunity is laid out for you," Ember finished, spitting the words out like grit.
He looked away. "I didn't say it like that."
"But that's exactly what you meant."
He didn't argue.
Her hands shook with the effort to remain calm, but her voice was a weapon. "You could've cheated with anyone, Liam. Anyone! But you chose the one person I had left. The only person I trusted. I loved you both. You knew what you meant to me. What you did was an act of cruelty, not a mistake."
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "But the truth is... I don't think you really loved me."
The accusation was shocking. And it broke her heart; it did also light her fury like a match on gasoline.
"What?" she asked, a dangerous quiet returning to her voice.
"I think you thought you did, Ember. But you don't know how to love. You're too walled off. Too stiff. You never ever gave me all of you."
She leaned across the table, her eyes drilling into his. "Is that your narrative? Is that the lie you tell Mara, too? It's easier to blame me for your disgusting betrayal, isn't it?"
He looked down at the table. "Mara and I… we're together now. And I hope one day you can be happy for us."
Ember let out a short, incredulous burst of air. "Happy for you?"
He reached across the table, clearly expecting forgiveness.
She yanked her hand back before he could touch her.
"I'm done here," she stated.
And she stood.
She kept her voice quiet, her posture straight. She refused to give him the scene he probably expected. Her dignity was the only thing they hadn't managed to steal.
She walked straight to the bar counter. She ordered a drink, then another, then a few more—enough to finally dull the sharp, insistent burning in her chest.
She didn't make a scene in public, not initially. But as the alcohol worked its slow poison, the fury gave way to a weary, heavy self-pity. She began to mutter to herself, loudly—cursing Liam, cursing Mara, cursing the whole rotten town, and finally, cursing the fate that made her so easy to discard.
The bartender watched, entertained, jotting down some truly creative expletives she used.
When she decided her bloodstream held enough alcohol to drown a small animal, she tossed a wad of cash onto the counter.
She was far too smart and far too angry to drive home.
So she walked.
---
The night was cool and quiet. She knew this town. She'd walked these streets a thousand times. Nothing ever happened here.
But the alcohol and the shock had left her mind volatile. Liam's poison words looped, turning the last flicker of rage into sick exhaustion.
"You don't know how to love."
"You never gave me all of you."
"Happy for us."
The tears came then, finally—hot, slow, and full of the bitter realization that she was just tired of fighting. She sobbed, hating herself for the weakness.
Why did this keep happening?
Why did the world constantly find new ways to take from her?
Her adoptive parents' old cruelty returned, heavy and familiar: she was found in a field, taken in out of obligation, a charity case. Not that they let her forget, They reminded her every chance they got that she owed them.
She had no one now.
No job.
No boyfriend.
No friend.
Not a single person who cared.
So Liam was right. She wasn't enough. She was just convenient until Mara came along.
She wiped her tears fiercely with the back of her hand and kept walking.
Then she saw it.
She blinked, thinking the streetlights or the liquor were playing tricks. But no. Right in the middle of the sidewalk.
A shimmering hole
.
A literal, pulsing circle in the air, rippling and glowing faintly, like heatwaves, but cold.
"What in God's name…?" Ember whispered, stepping closer, in stupid white girl fashion. her suspicion overriding fear.
The shimmering widened.
It flickered, almost invitingly.
Then it tugged.
"Hey!"
Something yanked hard on her ankle—and gravity simply abandoned its post.
She slipped.
Her last, ragged scream was one of pure, outraged fury as the ground vanished, and the sickening light swallowed her whole.
And just like that,
Ember fell out of her world.