It began with a breath.

  Not mine. Not Cra’s. Not Konrad’s.

  Erich’s.

  The kind of breath that sounds like it’s being dragged from somewhere it doesn’t want to leave. The kind that knows what’s about to surface.

  He was still standing, but his posture had shifted—subtly, then completely. His shoulders hunched forward like a weight had dropped across them, like his spine had folded to make room for something else. His fingers curled in and uncurled. Not a tremor—an adjustment.

  Helene sat across from him, legs crossed, hands still folded gently in her p. Her eyes didn’t blink.

  “Breathe,” she said.

  “I am,” he replied. But it came out strained.

  The temperature in the room hadn’t changed, but I felt a draft. A pull beneath the floorboards. The sound of the clock above the doorway stuttered.

  Something was slipping.

  Erich looked at us. Then at Helene. “They shouldn’t be here.”

  “They need to be,” she said simply. “So do you.”

  Konrad took one quiet step closer. Cra remained beside me, her pulse steady in my peripheral vision. She was bracing, ready.

  Erich looked at me. “I don’t remember everything.”

  “You don’t need to,” I said. “Just remember enough.”

  “I see fshes,” he said. “A forest. Fire. A bde I didn’t know how to hold. Your face. Bleeding. My hands—” He stopped.

  His voice cracked. Not from emotion. From friction. Like it was grating against something inside him.

  Helene uncrossed her legs and stood. “You’re still resisting.”

  Erich’s head twitched. His fingers fred.

  “I don’t want this,” he said. “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “No,” Helene said. “But you came here anyway.”

  And then it happened.

  A pulse—not from Cra. From Erich.

  It wasn’t light. It wasn’t heat. It was pressure. The walls seemed to breathe once and then hold still.

  Konrad moved first. He stepped forward to anchor the moment.

  “Erich,” I said, “listen to me—”

  But Erich was gone.

  Not physically. Not yet. But the person in front of us—the version we’d spoken to—had already stepped into something older.

  His eyes locked on mine.

  “You were dying,” he said—voice unrecognizable.

  I froze in pce. Chills went down my spine.

  “I died.” he added.

  Then he struck.

  He didn’t lunge. He flickered. One second across from Helene—then directly in front of me.

  I stepped, blinking backward just as his arm whipped past. It missed my jaw by a fraction, but the air carried the momentum.

  Konrad caught him from the side, driving him sideways into the shelves. They crashed—books exploding in the air. Erich twisted mid-fall, pnting a boot on the edge of a chair and unching off it.

  He spun. Elbow first.

  Konrad absorbed the hit with a shoulder turn, grabbed Erich’s forearm, and locked it—temporarily.

  “Do it now!” he shouted.

  I reached in, aiming for his thread, trying to sync it with mine.

  My hand caught his wrist.

  The moment locked.

  Everything slowed.

  And I saw it.

  —An open Pin. —A bell. —A bde. —A man screaming. —A woman falling. —Fire. —Cold. —A promise. —A name I didn’t recognize, shouted.

  Erich’s body fred white.

  The sync broke.

  He screamed—his eyes hollowed, glowing white.

  The clinic shattered—not physically. Temporarily.

  Walls bent inward. Helene raised her hand. A shimmer. A warp. The space folded into itself, caught in a loop of its own making.

  ***

  We were no longer in a room.

  We were inside a fight that had already started.

  Erich didn’t hesitate. He pushed forward again, faster this time. His thread trailed behind him like a ribbon of burning light.

  Cra threw up a stabilizing pulse—blue waves vibrating outward—but Erich cut through it. The field cracked.

  Konrad braced himself and unched a moment lock.

  The world froze for half a heartbeat.

  Erich’s momentum suspended mid-air, body twisted like a predator mid-pounce.

  I blinked behind him. Cra repositioned.

  “Now!” Konrad barked.

  Cra fired another pulse. I smmed my palm to Erich’s back.

  Time fractured.

  He moved again, faster than before. The lock shattered.

  Konrad was flung across the room, hitting the floor with a grunt. Cra’s pulse recoiled on her like a wave bouncing against steel. She staggered.

  Erich turned on me, eyes lit with something beyond memory—like recognition touched with grief.

  “Why couldn’t you just let go…” he said.

  “You can’t run away from it forever!” I shouted at him.

  He lunged forward.

  We collided.

  His fists moved like a memory recalled mid-motion—fluent and furious. I barely ducked one, took a gncing hit across the ribs, then rewound—sliding back just enough to regroup.

  Cra pulsed again, this time with intention. The light caught Erich mid-turn, stalling his rhythm. Konrad was back on his feet. Blood ran from his lip, but his stance hadn’t changed.

  “We have to end this,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Together.”

  ***

  We moved at once.

  Cra surged forward, releasing a dual-wave, a resonance pulse—one for stability, the other tuned sharp to disrupt his flow. It hit Erich clean. He staggered.

  Konrad darted in from the left. He grabbed Erich’s shoulder, spun him mid-strike, and smmed him back against the wall of warped light.

  I stepped, blinking behind him, reaching for his thread once more.

  I touched his spine.

  His breath caught.

  For a moment, the space turned quiet.

  No motion. No sound. Just pressure.

  The thread locked.

  Erich frozen in pce—our threads now synced.

  The moment colpsed inward.

  The loop Helene had created buckled. Sealed.

  The light shattered and withdrew.

  We were back in the clinic.

  Erich crumbled to his knees.

  Barely breathing. His whole body shaking. Trembling.

  Konrad stood above him. Cra knelt beside. I stepped back.

  “I… remember,” he said.

  He looked at the three of us—his eyes clear now.

  And for the first time, I saw him. Not as a fighter, not as a threat—but as someone returning from the edge of something none of us could name.

  Tatsuya.

  Behind us, Helene exhaled, her hand now lowered.

  Sme smiled faintly.

  Like this had all gone exactly the way she pnned.