The wooden floorboards whispered under Augustine’s bare feet as she darted through the dim hallway, the excitement of the game thrumming in her chest. The air carried a blend of smells—old varnished wood, the faint bite of mothballs, and something sweet, like the apple pie Grandma had left cooling in the kitchen. Outside, the summer evening was slipping into dusk, the last golden rays of sunlight filtering through lace curtains and casting long, ghostly shadows across the floral wallpaper.

  Augie—no one called her Augustine except grown-ups and strangers—felt the thrill of competition settling in her bones. She was undefeated in hide-and-seek, and she intended to keep it that way. Margaret and Henry, her older siblings, had the advantage of experience, and Henry had a longer stride that gave him the speed. But neither of them had her kind of brain. Augie was small, fast, and clever. She could fit in places they never even considered.

  The house, old as it was, was perfect for a game like this. It was the kind of house that had history—with its high ceilings and crown molding, its winding wooden staircase, and the ever-present scent of dust and age that clung to the heavy drapes. Grandma had lived here since she was younger than Augie, in a time before television and refrigerators that hummed through the night. The house was filled with old furniture, shelves packed with thick books, and cabinets stuffed with porcelain dolls with eyes that never quite seemed to stop watching you.

  But the best part? The hiding spots.

  She pressed her back against the wall, listening. Henry was still counting in the front parlor, his voice bouncing against the walls, growing louder and louder.

  “...twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty! Ready or not, here I come!”

  Augie swallowed down a giggle and darted toward the kitchen. Her feet made almost no sound on the runner rug stretched across the hallway, though she nearly tripped over the lumpy bit near the edge—something she’d learned to avoid after watching Grandma stumble on it a dozen times before.

  The kitchen smelled warm and homey, filled with the lingering scent of dinner and the sharp tang of cinnamon from the pie cooling on the windowsill. She considered hiding in the pantry, where the shelves were stacked high with glass jars of preserved peaches and pickled vegetables. But then she thought better of it—Henry was predictable, and he would check there first.

  She needed something better. Something bolder.

  Her mind raced through possibilities. The heavy curtains in Grandma’s bedroom? No—Margaret had tried that trick last time, and Henry had practically pounced on her. The piano bench in the sitting room? Too obvious. The big wooden wardrobe upstairs? Too risky; it creaked when you tried to close the door.

  Then it hit her.

  The basement.

  Grandma never let them go down there. Ever.

  Too many things to trip over, she always said. Too dark, too dusty, too dangerous. But those were all things adults worried about, not kids. Besides, what better hiding place than somewhere forbidden? If she could stay quiet, she could win. Easily.

  She moved fast, her pulse quickening as she approached the narrow door beneath the staircase. The handle was brass, its once-bright surface dulled by years of use. It felt cold under her fingers as she turned it.

  The door gave a long, low groan as it swung open.

  A breath of cool, damp air rushed up to meet her, smelling of old stone and something earthy, like the scent after a summer rain. The stairwell yawned before her, wooden steps leading down into darkness.

  She hesitated.

  Not because she was scared. She wasn’t scared.

  She was just... thinking.

  It was darker than she expected. The light switch was somewhere along the wall, but she didn’t want to fumble for it. Henry might hear. And besides, if she was really going to do this, she had to prove she could stay down here in the dark without freaking out.

  Prove to who? a small voice in her head asked.

  To herself, obviously.

  With a deep breath, she stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind her.

  The basement swallowed her in quiet, except for the faint creak of the house settling above her. The temperature dropped almost immediately, the summer heat from the main floor vanishing as if she had stepped into another world.

  She moved carefully, feeling her way forward along the wooden banister. The steps beneath her feet were solid but uneven, worn down in the center from decades of use. She counted them as she descended—one, two, three, four—until her bare foot met the cool stone floor at the bottom.

  It was even darker down here than she’d thought. Only the faintest sliver of light slipped through the gaps in the floorboards above. But her eyes were adjusting. Slowly, shapes began to form out of the gloom—an old wooden workbench piled with dusty tools, a stack of forgotten furniture covered in white sheets, a great metal washtub standing against the far wall.

  She moved further in, ducking behind a stack of wooden crates near the coal chute. The air smelled different here—older, almost like the pages of Grandma’s oldest books. A scent of time itself, of things left untouched.

  She crouched down, tucking her knees to her chest.

  This was perfect.

  If she stayed still and quiet, Henry would never find her. He might not even check the basement at all, considering Grandma’s warnings. Augie grinned to herself in the dark, triumphant.

  Then, something moved.

  A scrape.

  Soft, barely more than a whisper.

  She froze. Her breath caught in her throat.

  It came from the far side of the basement, near the heavy storage trunks that no one ever opened. A slow, deliberate shift—like something shifting its weight.

  A draft curled around her ankles, cool and unsettling.

  Her fingers dug into the fabric of her dress, her heart hammering.

  It was probably just the house settling. Or maybe a rat. Or maybe Henry trying to trick her.

  Augie’s lips pressed into a thin line.

  No way was she going to be spooked by some dumb noise. If it was Henry, she would call his bluff. If it wasn’t… well, then she would prove she wasn’t scared anyway.

  Taking a breath, she whispered into the darkness:

  “I know you’re there.”

  Silence.

  Then another shift. Closer.

  Augie swallowed hard.

  The air felt thicker somehow. The basement, which had been cool and still only moments before, now felt heavy. Close.

  Her fingers tightened into a fist. She wasn’t scared. She just… she just needed to go back upstairs. Right now. Before Henry came looking.

  Slowly, carefully, she shifted her weight and began creeping back toward the stairs. Her breathing sounded too loud in the quiet.

  Step by step, she inched away from the crates, toward the dim outline of the staircase.

  Another sound.

  Behind her.

  Something brushing against the floor.

  A shiver raced up her spine.

  Move, Augie, now.

  She turned fast, feet scrambling against the stone, and bolted for the stairs. Her hands found the banister, her legs pushing her up two steps at a time. She reached the top, shoved the door open, and burst into the hallway, slamming it behind her.

  For a long moment, she just stood there, breathing hard, staring at the door as if it might open on its own.

  Then Henry’s voice rang out from the parlor.

  “Gotcha, Margaret!”

  A rush of relief flooded her, mixing with the lingering thrum of adrenaline in her veins.

  She let out a breath and forced herself to laugh.

  It was just the house settling.

  That was all.

  It had to be.

  she resolved herself. i wasn't scared! it must have been nothing! I'm going back.

  The basement swallowed her in heavy, cool air, a quiet hush wrapping around her like a wool blanket. It smelled of dust, old metal, and something dry and forgotten. The light from the stairs barely reached past the first few steps, leaving the corners thick with shadow.

  She darted past boxes stacked like sleeping giants, her bare feet whispering against the cold cement. The furnace loomed ahead—a hulking thing of cast iron, its round belly stretching toward the ceiling. Its rusted metal skin looked cracked in places, and from its top, thick pipes twisted out like an octopus frozen mid-dance.

  Grandma had said horses used to bring coal here, that men with blackened hands had shoveled it in, feeding the beast to keep the house warm. Now it burned something else—something in the pipes, something she couldn't see. But she imagined it still had a heart, glowing somewhere deep inside.

  She pressed against the side of the furnace, its surface cool and a little rough beneath her fingertips. And there—just behind it—was a door.

  A tiny door, half-hidden in the shadows, sat crookedly against the stone wall, its edges swallowed by years of dust and neglect. The wood, once sturdy, had darkened with age, its surface cracked and splintered in places. The paint—was it once white? Blue?—had peeled away so much that only stubborn, flaking remnants clung to the rough grain. Rust bloomed across the iron hinges and handle, staining the wood with streaks of deep orange-brown, like dried blood on an old bandage.

  Augie wrinkled her nose. It smelled different here—sharper, like metal and dry earth, with something faintly acrid underneath, something that reminded her of the time Grandpa’s truck battery had leaked onto the driveway. She reached out, fingers hovering just above the handle, hesitant to touch the rusted metal. What was this door doing here, hidden behind the furnace? It was too small for a person to use—barely big enough for her to squeeze through. Had it been meant for something else? A crawl space? A coal chute? Some secret passageway to nowhere?

  A thrill ran through her. She loved finding things like this. Things that made the house feel alive—like it had stories of its own, whispers buried in its walls. Maybe this was one of them. Maybe this door had been waiting for someone to find it.

  The house groaned above her, the long, low creak of wood settling, stretching. Augie stiffened. Then, she heard it—soft but unmistakable. The faintest click of the basement door opening.

  Her heart leapt into her throat. Henry. He was coming. She couldn’t get caught now. Not after making it this far.

  Without another thought, she grabbed the rusted handle—flinching as rough metal scraped her palm—and yanked the door open just enough to slip inside. Dust swirled around her as she pulled it shut, closing herself into the tight, secret space beyond.

  She squeezed through, dust tickling her nose, and pulled the door shut just enough to leave a sliver of light. The space inside was small, just enough for her to curl up, knees tucked against her chest. The floor was rough with bits of old coal, tiny pebbles pressing into her skin. It smelled sharp and dry, like an attic that had never been touched.

  Above her, the house groaned. A rush of warm air shivered through the ducts, making them shift with a soft, hollow clank-clank.

  She held her breath.

  Outside, footsteps creaked on the basement stairs.

  The game was still on.

  She curled tighter, heartbeat thudding in her ears, fingers pressing into the cold earth beneath her. If she stayed very still—if she didn’t even breathe—maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t find her.

  Maybe the furnace would keep her secret.

  The warmth of the house faded as time stretched, unraveling like thread pulled too thin. The cool breath of the basement turned colder, seeping into her skin, the air thickening until it felt too dense, too still. A silence settled over everything, deeper than before, as if the house itself were holding its breath. The walls no longer simply stood around her—they seemed to press inward, watching. The air had weight now, a heavy, invisible thing that settled on her shoulders, curling in her lungs. Her heart no longer raced with the thrill of the game, but with something slower, something unfamiliar.

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  Her breath hitched, chest tightening like an invisible rope was cinching around her ribs. The air felt wrong—too thick, too heavy, pressing down on her as though the walls themselves were closing in. A creeping numbness spread from her fingertips, her pulse hammering against her skin in uneven, panicked beats.

  She couldn’t get enough air. Her lungs strained, her throat clenched shut as if she were drowning in the stagnant weight of the basement. The silence roared in her ears, louder than Henry’s voice, louder than her own ragged gasps. The dim space around her seemed to warp, twisting at the edges of her vision, as if time itself was stretching and shrinking, looping over itself in a way that made her head spin.

  Her fingers scrabbled against the rough floor, legs curling inward as her thoughts spiraled.

  You need to get up. You need to move. You need to—

  A fresh wave of dizziness crashed over her. Her heart stuttered, then pounded, erratic and frantic, her skin damp with a sudden cold sweat. Spots of light danced before her eyes, the walls of the tiny space blurring together.

  Then, everything faded.

  Darkness swallowed her whole.

  Something had changed.

  She awoke to a glow. Not the harsh glare of a ceiling light. Not the flicker of neon. Something softer, warmer. Alive.

  A cat sat a few feet away, its body a small, unmoving shape in the dimness. Not at the foot of a bed—there was no bed here, only the rough, uneven ground beneath her.

  It was an ordinary cat, or at least, it should have been. A short, compact thing, its fur was a patchwork of dusty brown and white, the kind of mottled color that made it easy to disappear into the corners of old houses. Its tail flicked once, slow and deliberate, curling just slightly at the tip like a question left unanswered.

  Its ears twitched, one standing tall while the other bent ever so slightly at the edge, a sign of an old fight or careless tumble. Its whiskers stretched wide, twitching as it observed her, its nose flaring as it took in her scent.

  Its eyes, round and glassy, reflected what little light the room offered, turning them into deep, endless pools. The pupils, thin and sharp, adjusted to the darkness, narrowing when she moved, widening when she stilled. Its breath was so quiet, so steady, that she could barely tell it was alive at all—until its chest rose just slightly, a subtle movement that sent a ripple through its sleek coat.

  There was nothing strange about it, nothing unnatural. It was a house cat, the kind you’d see curled on an old woman’s lap or stretching lazily across a sun-warmed floor. But here, in this space, in this wrongness, its very presence made her stomach twist.

  It was watching her, but not in the way a cat usually watches—a flickering, half-curious glance before losing interest. No, it was studying her, measuring her in some quiet, unreadable way.

  She stared back, trying to see if there was anything else, anything wrong. But it remained the most mundane thing in a place where nothing felt real.

  And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the longer she looked, the more it would change.

  She blinked, rubbing her eyes hard, the way she did when waking from a deep sleep, but the world around her didn’t change. When she looked again, the cat was different.

  Its fur shimmered between silver and shadow, as if light itself clung to it. Its eyes—one gold, the other violet—shifted when she blinked. Now amber. Now ice blue. The change wasn’t gradual, wasn’t a slow morph like ink spreading in water—it snapped into place, like flipping the page of a book and finding a different story underneath.

  A cold ripple of panic slid down her spine.

  She had just seen it—plain, ordinary, dull-colored fur. A tail that had curled at the tip. But now? Now it was sleek, elongated, its form just slightly stretched, its tail longer, its ears sharper. It was still a cat, still sat just as before, still watching her. But not the same cat.

  Her breath hitched.

  She squeezed her hands into fists, willing her mind to catch up, to find logic where there was none. Had it moved? Had she imagined the difference? Had she hit her head harder than she thought?

  But she knew, in the deepest part of her chest where fear curled its claws, that this was no trick of the eyes. No mistake.

  She set it down, her hands trembling. A heartbeat later, a different cat sat in its place.

  She tried to focus. Hadn’t its ears been shorter a moment ago? Hadn’t its fur been black?

  Her stomach twisted.

  She knew this cat.

  It wasn’t just recognition. It was something deeper, something that curled into her bones and wrapped around the edges of her thoughts like a forgotten memory surfacing from the depths. She knew this cat—not in the way she knew her grandmother’s house or the sound of Henry’s laughter. It was the way she knew the rhythm of her own heartbeat, the way her breath filled her lungs without thinking.

  It was a part of her.

  A fragment of her own soul.

  The connection throbbed, real and undeniable, stretching between them like a thin thread of unseen light. It pulsed in her chest, pressing against her ribs as if something inside her had been waiting—waiting—for this moment. The cat’s gaze, unblinking and endless, bore into her with an understanding too vast for something so small.

  Then it moved.

  Slowly, deliberately, it lifted one paw and placed it on her wrist. The touch was impossibly light, but it sent a jolt through her, a tingling sensation that spread up her arm like warmth seeping into frozen limbs. It wasn’t just a touch—it was a claim, a finalization of something unspoken.

  Something inside her shifted. A door unlocked, a piece clicked into place, and for a moment, the world around her flickered—not darkness, not light, but something in between.

  The realization settled like a weight in her chest, pressing the air from her lungs. The glow deepened, shifting in ways her eyes couldn’t quite follow, as if the very fabric of reality unraveled just at the edges of her vision.

  The cat blinked, slow and knowing.

  Then it whispered her name.

  "Augie"

  Its voice wasn’t a sound exactly, not something that traveled through air and touched her ears. It was more like a thought that did not belong to her, curling through her mind with a weight she couldn't push away. Familiar and foreign all at once.

  "You are lost," it murmured, its tone more observation than concern. "You don't even know it yet."

  Augie’s breath caught in her throat. The cat blinked slowly, tail flicking with a lazy disinterest, as though what it had just said was of no real consequence. Like it had spoken to many before her, and it would speak to many after.

  "What... what do you mean?" Her voice came out quieter than she intended, hoarse and uncertain.

  The cat stretched, arching its back before settling again, tucking its paws beneath itself like it had all the time in the world. "I suppose that depends on what you think ‘lost’ means. But that’s not important yet."

  Its yellow-and-green gaze locked onto hers, and something in it made her insides twist—not fear, not quite, but something close. A deep, crawling sense that this was real in a way she didn't understand. That this moment had been waiting for her, whether she wanted it or not.

  "I am a familiar," the cat continued, watching her reaction. "A guide for those who need one. A tether for those on the edge. A lantern for those wandering too far into the dark."

  Augie swallowed, trying to make sense of the words. "A... a guide? For what?"

  The cat let out a soft, amused hum, as if it found her question dull but expected. "That remains to be seen."

  A flicker of irritation broke through her confusion. "That’s not an answer."

  "No," the cat agreed, stretching one paw lazily forward. "It isn’t."

  There was something sharp-edged about the way it spoke, something too knowing, too old for its small, unbothered form. But there was curiosity there, too—a quiet sort of interest, like she was a puzzle it hadn’t quite decided was worth solving yet.

  Then, almost as an afterthought, it added, "If it helps, I don’t choose who I appear to. The lost ones call me, even if they don’t mean to."

  The words settled over her, heavy and cold.

  She hadn’t called for anything. Had she?

  glancing around, Augustine realized they were on a platform, with tall walls surrounding them. a set of stairs descending Infront of her.

  “It happens fast, doesn’t it?”

  The voice slithered through the stairwell, soft as the whisper of a turning page. Augustine flinched, her pulse jumping.

  She turned.

  The cat sat on the step behind her.

  Only, it wasn’t quite the same cat.

  Its fur shimmered, a patchwork of shadows and shifting light. Its tail curled differently than before, ears slightly sharper, eyes a color she couldn't name. It blinked once, slow, unbothered.

  “I always find it fascinating when they notice,” the cat mused. “The moment they realize their body isn’t theirs anymore.”

  Augustine looked down.

  Her fingers trembled as she traced the scars on her wrist. The ones that hadn’t been there before. The ones she knew too well.

  Memories cracked open. The bathtub, the weight in her chest, the sharp edge against soft skin. The cold creeping in. The silence afterward.

  She swallowed hard, shaking her head. “No. No, I’m ten. I’m ten years old.”

  The cat’s pupils narrowed, and for a fraction of a second, its fur rippled again, shifting between forms, too quick to grasp. It yawned, flashing sharp little teeth.

  “Were you?” it asked, tilting its head. “Are you?”

  The voices above wavered. Distant but familiar. Henry. Margaret. Others. Their words tangled, stretched, as if spoken underwater.

  Augustine’s breath hitched. “What is this?”

  The cat stretched luxuriously, paws pressing into the step like kneading dough. “It’s what comes next,” it said simply. Then, as if humoring her, it added, “Or what always was.”

  The air thickened. The walls of the stairwell pulsed, bending inward. The wood beneath her feet didn’t feel like wood anymore.

  Augustine wavered. “I don’t understand.”

  The cat sighed. “You will.”

  Another step. Another pull. Another second stretching impossibly long.

  she stood, walking to the topmost step. looking down.

  The descent was endless. The air itself grew heavier, pressing against her like an unseen weight. Her thoughts tangled in the spaces between steps, stretching and contracting, slipping away before she could grasp them.

  She hadn't meant to move. Not at first. The first step had happened without thought, a pull in her chest, an invisible string tightening, reeling her downward. The second step had followed before she could question the first. By the third, it felt inevitable.

  Or maybe, the cat had nudged her.

  She couldn’t be sure. It was always just beyond her sight, shifting, flickering between one form and another. But she felt its presence—an urging, a whisper, a brush of fur against her leg that made her body lean forward before her mind could resist.

  It didn’t push her. Not really. But it didn’t need to.

  The stairwell curled downward, swallowing the light, stretching the distance behind her. Somewhere above, voices faded, distorted into echoes from another time. A warmth she almost remembered—a home, laughter, the weight of something safe—slipped through her fingers like mist.

  “Keep going,” the cat murmured. “You’re already past the point of turning back.”

  The voices above faded, dissolving into echoes too distant to make sense of. She thought she heard laughter, the clinking of dishes, the warmth of a home that no longer felt real. Then another voice, smaller, whispered in the back of her mind—her own voice, but not as she remembered it.

  "i should go"

  The cat moved alongside her, always just at the edge of her vision. Sometimes a sleek black creature with piercing sky-blue eyes, sometimes a tabby with tufted ears, sometimes something else entirely—a ripple in space, a distortion in the stairwell’s fragile reality.

  “You’ve done this before,” it said.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  A soft chuckle, the kind that made her skin prickle. “Oh, but you have.”

  Augustine swallowed. The air smelled different here—like damp earth, the metallic bite of old blood, something acrid and bitter that made her stomach twist. The walls seemed narrower.

  “How many times do you think you’ve climbed these stairs?” the cat asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  “How many times have you fallen?”

  The floor beneath her wavered. A sickening tilt, as if the whole world had tipped to one side. She gripped the wooden railing, fingers pressing into the worn grooves.

  “I don’t fall,” she said, voice hoarse.

  “You did once.” The cat’s eyes flickered. Now amber, now violet, now something too deep to name. “You remember, don’t you? The water. The quiet. The feeling of slipping away.”

  Her heart lurched.

  Her breath came faster. She did not want to remember.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, but the memory rose up like a wave, cold and inescapable. The dull ache in her chest, the weight of grief pressing her down. Her mother was gone. The world had cracked open, and she had wanted to fall through the space between.

  And she had.

  The scars on her wrists throbbed.

  She clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms. “That was different.”

  The cat tilted its head. “Was it?”

  She kept walking. She had to.

  The stairs stretched onward, twisting, warping. The light above was long gone. There was only the soft glow that pulsed from somewhere beneath her, a distant, throbbing heartbeat in the dark.

  She was older now. Fifteen? Sixteen? She could feel it in the way her joints ached, in the way her breath came deeper, steadier. The past was slipping into the present, the years folding in on themselves.

  The cat purred. “You’re remembering.”

  A shiver ran down her spine.

  “Where do these stairs lead?” she asked.

  The cat’s tail flicked, the tip curling like a question mark. “To the end of the story.”

  Her stomach twisted. “What story?”

  The cat’s grin was almost human. “Yours.”

  they descended in silence. together.

  The descent stretched. The air grew heavier, thick with memories, and with every step, the past curled around her like cold fingers dragging her backward.

  She should not have been alive. Not after the river swallowed her lungs when she was eighteen. Not after the fever burned her mind when she was twenty. Not after the bridge, the bottle, the shattered glass when she was twenty-seven. But she was. Somehow, she always was.

  The cat never looked at her as it walked beside her. It didn’t need to. “You are very stubborn,” it mused.

  She didn’t answer.

  The stairwell deepened, twisting around itself like something alive, warping as if space itself rejected it. And then, the steps ended abruptly. Before them stretched an abyss—an open cavern, so vast the ceiling and walls seemed to stretch forever, drowning in endless darkness.

  Opposite them, doors began to appear. Not built. Not placed. Just… surfacing, peeling into existence like wounds opening in the fabric of reality. Tall, narrow, endless. Each one waiting.

  The cat finally turned to her. “Choose.”

  It was not just underground—it was beneath time, beneath reason. A sanctuary for the forgotten. A place where things had been buried, not because they deserved it, but because the world could not hold them anymore.

  The doors stood before her like monuments to forgotten nightmares. Some were ancient things, their wood blackened with age, bound in rusted iron and etched with symbols that twisted when she tried to read them. Others were pristine, eerily untouched, their surfaces smooth like polished bone. Some bled at the edges, as though something inside was pressing too hard against the frame, trying to escape.

  They were waiting.

  The cat curled its tail around its paws, watching her with those ever-shifting eyes. "This is a prison, Augustine," it said, voice soft but weighted. "A prison beneath all prisons. For things too dangerous, too wrong, too... inconvenient to exist in the world above."

  Her breath came shallow. "Monsters?"

  "What else would you call them?" The cat stretched, its form flickering between states—a sleek black shape, a shadow with too many eyes, something long and spindly with silvered fur. "Some were born as monsters. Some became them. Others were made monsters by those who could not understand them."

  She swallowed, her gaze locked on a door that seemed to hum, vibrating with a force she couldn’t see. "And you want me to choose?"

  The cat’s tail flicked. "You stepped through, didn’t you? You bear their mark. That means you are part of this place now, whether you like it or not. You owe them something."

  The words coiled around her like chains. Her fingers tingled, and the weight of unseen hands pressed against her shoulders, against her chest, as if something within the doors recognized her presence.

  Recognized her as theirs.

  Her body ached. Her hands bled, carved with jagged, burning symbols that pulsed beneath her skin. She was not sure they had always been her hands.

  When she chose the door, the world ruptured. A tide of writhing things poured from the threshold—shadows with too many limbs, eyes that burned like dying stars, creatures that moved like smoke and silk. They did not scream. They did not roar. They surrounded her in silence, pressing against her, filling her lungs with the weight of something older than language.

  Their touch did not flay her skin, but it unmade her.

  Her body twisted, bent at angles that should not have existed. Bones cracked, stretched, reformed. The symbols they carved into her did not cut, but reshaped.

  She was theirs now.

  The cat had not run. It had not fought. It had only watched as they reached for it, too. As they pulled it into their tide, vanishing into the void beyond the door.

  And then she was alone.

  The weight of her body crushed her. She could not stand, could barely breathe. But she could crawl. She could claw her way forward, up, toward a light that no longer felt real.

  The stairs took days. Blood left a trail behind her. Time pulled at her, stretched her, aged her. But through sheer will, through raw tenacity, she climbed.

  And she did not stop.

  When she reached the surface, the air reeked of decay, thick with the scent of wood long past its prime, of damp rot, of time left to fester. The house had aged beyond recognition—its bones twisted, the walls slumped inward as if exhaling a final breath. The floral wallpaper had peeled back in jagged curls, exposing brittle wood beneath, warped and splitting along its veins. The ceiling sagged, its beams bending under the weight of years that should not have passed.

  Dust lay thick on everything, untouched by life. The furniture had collapsed into itself, chairs reduced to skeletal remains, their spindly legs snapped. The chandelier hung like a corpse from the ceiling, its crystals dulled, strands of cobwebs stretching from it like veins in stagnant water.

  She staggered forward, her footfalls sending up small clouds of debris, and stopped at the kitchen threshold. The pie on the windowsill had become nothing but a husk, its crust petrified, its filling a dry, blackened stain. Time had gnawed at the house, devoured it, left only echoes in its wake.

  The world had moved on without her.

  Decades had passed.

  Her knees buckled, body still screaming from what had been taken, from what had been given. The scars along her arms burned anew, not with pain, but with remembrance. The weight of the symbols carved into her pulsed in time with her heartbeat, as if something still whispered from beneath her skin.

  She finally understood what they had whispered to her in the dark.

  It was never 'thank you.'

  It was 'see you soon.'