The snow had fallen silently overnight.
A thin white film coated the world outside — rooftops, bare branches, the fence posts lining the street like pale, slumbering sentinels. Inside the house, the morning light pressed gently against the frosted windows, diffused and gray.
Moore sat up slowly.
His breath clouded in the air, the room colder than usual. He didn't reach for his blanket. He didn't move much at all. Instead, his gaze lingered on the trail of frost spiderwebbing across the corner of the window. It reminded him of something—No.Someone.
A voice. From a dream.Not his mother's. Not Ronell's.Soft, almost musical, calling his name with a weight that stirred something deep inside him.
He couldn't recall the words. Just the way they made his chest ache.
In her own room, Ronell sat on the edge of her bed, her notebook balanced on her knees. She flipped through its pages, half-asleep, until she found a strange sketch she didn't remember making.
A name, scrawled at the top of the page.
May.Below it, a pair of eyes.
Not brown. Not amber.Yellow.
They stared back at her from the paper with eerie calm. And something in her stomach twisted—not from fear, exactly. But recognition.
She didn't know who the girl was.But she did.
The house was quiet. Too quiet.
No sizzling from the kitchen. No soft radio hum. Their mother had left early, apparently — though neither of them could remember her saying she would.
Their father's door was shut. The living room light off. The silence curled around the walls like fog.
They moved through the morning like shadows — brushing past each other in the hall without speaking. The floor creaked beneath slippered feet. Coats slid onto shoulders in silence.
Even the front door opening felt strangely loud.
The air outside bit at their skin, sharp and dry. Their boots crunched softly in the snow.
And then—They saw her.
Standing by the side of the road, motionless as a statue, black coat brushing the tops of her knees. Long, dark hair fluttered around her like ink in water.
May.
No one else was there. Just her.
She wasn't looking at them. Not exactly. But she wasn't looking away either.
She stood like someone who had always been there.Like this moment was the only one that had ever mattered.
Moore stopped walking. So did Ronell.
For a long beat, none of them spoke.
Then — quietly — Moore breathed out:"…It's her."
And Ronell, hand clutching the strap of her bag a little too tightly, whispered back:"I know."
May didn't move. She didn't smile. She just waited.
As if the next step wasn't hers to take.
But theirs.
---
Moore is the first to step forward.
He doesn't look back, not even once. The snow seems quieter around him, like the world is holding its breath.
Ronell watches his silhouette move ahead — hesitates, breath fogging the air — and then follows. Her boots sink softly into the snow, leaving two parallel trails behind them.
May turns only when they're close enough to hear her speak without raising her voice.
She begins to walk.
They move through the town in silence.
Only… it doesn't feel like their town anymore.
Storefronts blur into pastel colors, their names smudged like chalk in the rain. The faces of people they pass are either half-formed or missing altogether. Lights flicker in windows like candle flames under water. A bus rumbles by without tires. A dog barks in reverse.
The snow falls upward, not down.
And yet—none of this feels wrong.
Only… detached. Like they're watching the world unravel from the inside out.
The sound beneath it all is strange, too.
Shoes crunching in snow that leaves no footprints.Distant wind chimes clinking in the sky.And underneath it all, a low hum — soft, steady — like the vibration of a bell that never stops ringing.
Ronell drifts closer to Moore, brushing his sleeve with hers. She murmurs:
"Do you see this too?"
He nods slowly.
"I think… we're dreaming."
She swallows.
"But I'm awake."
May finally speaks — her voice low, calm, certain.
"It's neither. And both."
Her feet make no sound as she walks. Her long black coat barely moves. She doesn't look back, but her voice carries as though she's speaking from all directions.
"You were never supposed to be here this long."
They stop near the edge of a forest that wasn't there a moment ago.
Tall trees. Frosted branches. A path that winds toward a glowing horizon that pulses like a heartbeat.
May turns to them. Her expression is unreadable.
"This place…" she says, her tone now softer, almost mournful, "is made of memory. Of things you couldn't let go. It's a loop, born from grief and rewound too many times. Now it's fraying."
Ronell furrows her brow. "You're saying this world is fake?"
May tilts her head.
"Not fake. Just... unfinished."
Moore steps forward, voice low.
"Why us?"
There's a pause. A single snowflake hangs in the air between them — frozen in place.
Then May says:
"Because you're the only ones left."
The trees seem to sway without wind. The glowing path pulses brighter. May turns once more toward it, her footsteps leading into the shimmer.
And behind them — far behind — the world begins to twitch.
A shadow forming at the edge of what used to be their town.
Watching.
Waiting.
---
They stepped into the clearing—a threshold where the world shifted.
The snow changed first, turning soft and weightless, like falling ash or stardust. Trees stretched taller, blurred at the edges, glowing with a faint silver light that pulsed like breath. The silence wasn't empty anymore; it hummed, low and tense, like a held breath.
Then—
"Don't go."
The voice cut through the clearing like a blade.
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. Every snowflake halted mid-air, suspended in the sound.
A boy appeared.
Sixteen or seventeen — or something only pretending to be. His skin was pale, unnaturally smooth, like porcelain held too close to fire. And his eyes… they didn't hold light or nuance, only an unbearable intensity — the kind that pressed against your chest without ever touching you.
He moved like silence. His coat fluttered without wind. His boots didn't crunch the snow. The illusion recoiled around him, edges fraying.
Ronell flinched.
Moore stared.
The boy looked like him.
Not exactly. But close enough to sting. A corrupted mirror, smooth and cold. Like someone had taken Moore's face and drained it of grief, of warmth, of anything soft.
Power clung to him like static.
May stepped in front of the twins, a rare panic breaking through her calm.
"You shouldn't be here," she said.
The boy tilted his head, slow. Measured.
"And yet," he replied, "you brought them to the edge."
His voice was velvet over iron. Each word deliberate.
His gaze slid to Ronell.
And something inside her cracked. Not pain. Not fear. Something older.
Recognition.
"They're lying to you," the boy said. "She is. All of this is a trap. You don't belong out there. You belong here. Where it's safe. Where it's quiet."
The ground began to split.
Not violently. Surgically.
Light leaked up from the cracks, threads of memory and meaning spilling into the air. The sky flickered like a dying signal. Trees bent away. Time stuttered.
Moore reached for Ronell.
She was already reaching back.
May moved to block the boy, her form flickering, half-cat, half-girl. Her voice trembled with something close to dread.
"He's not one of you," she said. "He's the enemy. He is keeping you trapped in this simulation."
The boy didn't flinch.
"Ignorance is mercy," he said. "You don't want to see what's waiting outside this dream."
Ronell's hand tightened around Moore's.
"Is he right?" she whispered.
May didn't speak.
Not right away.
And that pause—that breath of silence—let the cracks widen.
The simulation began to tear.
---
The world trembles. Light flickers like it's gasping for breath.
May turns to face them, the illusion fracturing around her like glass held in stasis.
"You have to choose," she says — not softly, but urgently now.
Moore and Ronell hesitate. Snow hangs suspended in the air, frozen mid-fall. Time feels brittle.
Moore looks at Ronell. She looks back. In their eyes: fear, yes — but something steadier too. Something that's always been there, quietly holding them together.
They move.
Together.
Toward May.
But the moment they do—
The boy lunges.
He doesn't run. He moves — a flash, a shadow torn loose from its anchor.
The world convulses as he raises a hand — and suddenly, roots writhe from the ground like tendrils of black smoke, grabbing for their legs, twisting reality itself.
"You can't leave," he growls. Not a scream. Just truth, spoken like law."You'll die out there."
Ronell stumbles, Moore grabs her hand tighter. The world howls.
"Moore—!" she cries, as the ground begins to crack.
And yet—he doesn't stop.
He grips her hand. He looks ahead.Not at the boy. Not at the past.At May.And beyond her — a crack of light. Cold and pure and real.
May's form flickers — caught between cat and girl, shadow and guide — but she stands her ground.
"You're not his," she says. "You never were."
The boy screams.
Darkness lashes out like a storm — but it misses.
Moore and Ronell, bound by something deeper than memory, push forward. The roots snap. The cold dissolves.
And then—
Everything shatters.
Like stepping through a sheet of ice.
The world folds inward, pulling the boy's cries with it.
His voice—distorted, fragmented—echoes behind them as the light swallows the illusion whole:
"Remember who you are…"
Then silence.
Just breath.
Just presence.
Just the two of them, and May, standing somewhere entirely new.
Somewhere… real.
---
They walked forward.Not knowing where it led.Only that something waited —and it remembered them.