Lasi didn't speak when the lecture ended. Not at first. The classroom hummed back to life around her like someone had hit play on a paused simulation sputtering back to life. Professor Caddel resumed pacing as if nothing had happened—his earlier distortions forgotten. Erased. Denied.
But she felt it.
The imprint. The static on her skin. Her handwriting—THE FOLD IS HUNGRY—still faintly etched on the page beside her untouched notes.
She stood too fast. The chair screeched.
Ka'rui rose with her, deliberate and calm. Salven stayed seated, watching her with a jaw so tight it looked carved from stone.
Outside in the hallway, Lasi walked too quickly. Her legs moved like they didn't belong to her. She was shaking. From adrenaline, from fear, from something else brushing up too close.
"You saw it," she said to no one in particular. "The freeze. The distortion. He wasn't—he wasn't real for a second—"
"Lasi—what the hell was that?!"
Salven's voice cracked like thunder in the corridor. Students turned, then looked away as his hand slammed into the wall beside her head.
"You poked the one thing we don't talk about in the middle of Phase Prep?!"
Lasi gave him a flat, unreadable stare. "What—questions aren't allowed now?"
"You didn't ask questions," he snapped. "You threw a live grenade. You think no one flagged you the second you said 'Fold'?"
Ka'rui stepped between them. "Okay, cool it—"
But Salven grabbed Lasi's collar.
Not rough. Not violent. Just firm.
"You're coming with me," he muttered.
"We're done playing chill now. You want to spiral? Fine. But not alone."
⸻
Dorm Rooftop – Cold Air, Colder Truths
—
Lasi stumbled slightly as Salven shoved open the rooftop door and pulled her into the night. Ka'rui followed close behind, already texting.
Scarlet:
Meet us on the roof. Now. It's getting worse.
Lasi folded her arms, standing near the edge with her back to them. Her posture was bored. Her eyes were not.
"You gonna drag me around every time I make a teacher uncomfortable?" she asked.
Ka'rui crossed her arms. "He didn't blink for three minutes, Lasi. The room froze. That's not normal."
"You're not normal," Salven muttered. "None of us are. But you? You're the epicenter."
Ka'rui's voice cut in. "Salven."
He let go of Lasi, not gently.
Ka'rui looked to her. "You better have answers."
The wind kicked up again, rustling the loose edges of Lasi's coat like fingers trying to pull her back.
⸻
Scarlet arrived soon after, thermos in hand. "Is this about Lasi seeing things again or Salven nearly throwing her off a railing?"
"Both," Ka'rui said.
Lasi opened her coat and dropped a cloth-wrapped bundle onto the ground between them with a muffled clink.
The pendant. The photos. Resin-sealed flowers. A child's drawing under a triple sun. Then the chip. Then the journal.
"She gave me all of this," Lasi said. "The woman at the hospital. Right before she jumped. Or vanished. Or both."
She explained everything—except the museum. That she kept. Private. Sacred.
"They've been watching me," she said. "Not just the system. The Fold. It's like I'm not just seeing it. I'm from it."
Ka'rui crouched beside the journal, flipping pages.
"These markings…" she murmured. "They look hand-sketched. Rushed."
Salven crouched as well. He froze.
His hand hovered over a drawn diagram—arrows, loops, red-slashed glyphs.
"That's battlefield code," he muttered. "Pre-strike vectoring. Camouflage displacement. This isn't art. It's tactical."
Scarlet raised a brow. "How do you know that?"
Salven didn't blink. "I just do."
Ka'rui's voice dropped. "Salven… have you been through the Passage?"
He stood. "Don't ask questions you don't want answers to."
⸻
Memory: When the Generals Met
—
Lasi and Scarlet had been best friends since before they had words.
Bonnie and Claria—mock warlords of the dorm courtyard. Mops for swords. Trash bins for cover. Tactics like poetry.
Salven showed up in the background first. Watching. Quiet. Always calculating.
Until one day, he pointed at Lasi's sketched battle plans and said,
"You flipped your flanking vector. That node'll get you gutted."
She stared at him.
"You a general or just a critic?"
"Depends who's winning," he replied.
He never left after that.
Ka'rui came later—through Scarlet. They were best friends instantly. Rivals the next day. Scarlet said it was fate. Ka'rui said it was statistical chaos.
The four of them clicked like they'd always been waiting for each other.
Some days, it felt like a joke.
Other days, it didn't.
⸻
When Mirrors Speak
—
The others drifted inside.
Lasi stayed.
She stood at the edge of the roof, cigarette burning slowly between her fingers. The shimmer above the city pulsed faintly—watching, waiting.
She didn't hear him this time. She just felt him arrive.
The soft shuffle of boots. A presence she didn't have to name.
Flick. Click.
Salven stood beside her, arm brushing hers lightly, offering the lighter. No words.
Lasi leaned in. The cigarette flared.
They smoked in silence, the wind playing with the edges of their coats, tugging hair across their faces like fingers through paper.
Then Salven moved behind her. Quiet. Sure. His arms slipped around her middle—slow and warm and weightless.
Not claiming her.
Just… anchoring.
Lasi didn't flinch. She let him hold her like that—loose, secure. The kind of embrace that didn't ask for anything but presence.
He rested his chin near her temple.
She kept her eyes on the horizon.
After a while, he said, "You holding back?"
"Yeah."
"You gonna share it?"
A pause. The wind shifted.
"I don't know who they were," she murmured. "This… lover. This memory. Or ghost. Or fragment. But I miss them."
Her voice cracked like a line through ice.
"I grieve someone I don't even know. I see them in dreams. In reflections. I felt them in that museum, like they were wrapped around me—just out of reach."
She stared at the ground.
"I feel crazy saying it out loud."
Salven's breath hitched. She didn't hear it—but she felt it.
She turned slightly.
And he saw it then. The rawness in her eyes. Not loud. Not performative. Just pain—quiet and real.
Something broke open in him.
He moved before he could think.
One hand cupped her jaw. The other tightened around her waist.
Then—he leaned in and whispered something in her ear.
Not in Common.
Not in any language she knew.
It was soft, almost broken—fluid and strange. Ancient. Alien.
A syllable soaked in ache. Like the sound of remembering a home you haven't yet found.
His voice cracked on the last word.
And whatever he'd said, it clung to her skin like a thread of heat.
Then he kissed her.
Not gentle. Not careful.
Heavy with longing. Wordless. Sudden.
Like kissing someone back through time—through forgetting, through the Fold itself.
Lasi gasped—not in shock, but recognition.
Her hand caught his coat.
She didn't pull closer.
She didn't pull away.
The world stilled.
No wind.
No shimmer.
Just that kiss.
And then—
He pulled back.
Not abruptly.
Just enough.
His eyes searched hers, wide, as if unsure if he'd just done that or dreamed it.
She stared at him, stunned. Mouth parted. Breath held.
He stepped back. Let go of her face.
His expression shuttered—Salven again. The quiet one. The one with secrets under silence.
"Sorry," he said, voice low. "Got caught in something."
He turned, lit another cigarette.
Like nothing had happened.
Like it hadn't felt like lifetimes poured into a single breath.
Lasi touched her lips.
Still warm.
Still shaking.
And that was when she felt it again.
His breath against her neck. A soft chuckle near her ear.
A ghost of sensation that sent a shiver down her spine.
She'd felt that before.
The museum.
The presence.
The warmth.
It hadn't been a hallucination.
Could it… have been him?
She didn't know.
But the familiarity wasn't in memory.
It was in muscle.
Like the way your body knows your own shadow.
The way your heart pauses when someone who's always been close steps back into place.
She leaned slightly into the space he'd left.
She didn't speak.
He didn't ask.
And that scared her more than anything.
Because sometimes, it felt like he knew.
Knew what she was.
What they'd been.
What they could be.
Behind them, the shimmer blinked once—twice—and held.
Lasi closed her eyes.
And for the first time,
she didn't feel afraid of being seen.