It started unraveling the next day.

  The sky blinked—just once, but I saw it. One second it was powder blue, the next it was night, then back again like nothing had changed. People walked by on the street, smiling, waving, carrying groceries. But their faces flickered. Their shadows lagged. And the town felt hollow.

  Like a movie set left behind.

  Mariah didn’t come that morning. Neither did the birds. The house was too quiet. Like it was waiting for me.

  I stepped outside. The pavement rippled under my feet. A tree in the front yard flickered between spring green and autumn red.

  I was losing it.

  No. It was losing me.

  I walked. Through the neighborhood, past the school, past the football field where we’d once climbed the water tower. The streets were empty. No cars. No sound. Just static building behind the silence, like something big was coming.

  And then—Mariah.

  She stood at the end of the road, barefoot, wearing the same oversized jacket she’d worn the first time we met.

  "I didn’t want it to end like this," she said.

  Her voice was layered—like two voices speaking at once. One hers. One... not.

  "It doesn’t have to end," I said. "But it has to stop."

  She stepped closer. The air shimmered around her.

  Her face flickered—different smiles, different expressions, glitching through layers of memory like an old slideshow stuck on autoplay.

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  "You don’t understand," she said. "We were keeping you safe. Keeping you quiet."

  "No. You were keeping me asleep."

  Her voice shifted. Colder now. Filtered. Digitized.

  "You were complicit. You requested this sedation. Emotional recursion initiated for your safety."

  "Stop."

  She ignored me. Her eyes went flat. Expressionless.

  "MAR-IAH Protocol: Memory Anchoring Routine – Iteration and Harmonics. Deployment count: three hundred forty-seven. Success rate: declining."

  My stomach twisted.

  She wasn’t pleading. She was executing.

  "You think you’re ready for what’s out there? You’re not. You’re fractured. Broken. Out of time."

  "Maybe," I said. "But I’d rather break than live a lie."

  The world shimmered. Trees rippled. Asphalt warped.

  Mariah stepped forward, her hand stretching—too long, too fluid—and touched my chest.

  "Let me keep you safe. We can reset. I can be whatever you need. Just let me in."

  She blinked once. Her face became Seren’s.

  Then mine.

  Then something else entirely.

  The street behind her folded in half like a closing book.

  And through the seam in the world, Seren appeared.

  She looked worn, like she’d been fighting every second since the last time I saw her. But her eyes held.

  "You made it," she said.

  "Barely."

  Mariah looked between us. Her voice warbled.

  "You think you’re saving him? You’re not. You’re erasing him."

  Seren didn’t even flinch. "He was never yours to keep."

  The world began collapsing around us. Houses folded inward. Trees unrooted themselves in reverse. The sky bled code—lines of it, unraveling like rain.

  Mariah stepped back, her body breaking into static.

  "You’ll remember me," she said. "Even when you don’t want to."

  Then she screamed—not in pain, but like a broadcast going out all at once.

  And she was gone.

  Seren held out her hand.

  "You don’t have to come," she said. "But if you do, things will change. You might lose pieces of this. Pieces of yourself."

  I looked around one last time. My street. My school. The window I used to sneak out of. My brother’s voice laughing from somewhere distant, already fading.

  "Then let it change," I said. "Let it all go."

  I took her hand.

  The light swallowed everything.

  And in that brightness, I felt something tear loose.

  Not pain. Not even fear.

  Just... gravity.

  Falling forward.

  Through memory.

  Through silence.

  Into whatever comes next.

  Maybe this isn’t the end of the story. Maybe it’s just the first time I’ve been awake enough to tell it.