Falling doesn't feel like falling.
It feels like being erased.
One moment the rooftop is under my feet, the girl's nails are still dug into my wrist, Ardan is still pulling my head away from my shadow—
and then everything tilts sideways, like someone pulled the floor out from under the world.
No wind.
No gravity.
No sense of direction.
Only pressure.
It crushes my ribs, my skull, my eyes. I try to scream, but sound folds in on itself as if the air refuses to carry it.
Something pulls me deeper.
Not a hand.
Not a force.
A *decision*—made somewhere outside me, as if my body has no say.
And then—
Silence.
I land on something soft, but it isn't ground. It's like falling onto smoke that remembers how to hold shape.
I open my eyes.
Everything is wrong.
The world is washed out, drained of color. Buildings stand in identical places, but they look hollow, outlines drawn in charcoal. The sky above is a flat sheet of grey. There is no wind. No stars. No moon. No sound.
No shadows.
I'm alone.
My throat clamps as panic rushes up.
"Ardan?" My voice is quiet, absorbed instantly by the air.
"Hello?"
Nothing answers.
I push myself up. Every limb feels heavy, like moving underwater.
My shadow lies at my feet—thin, uncertain, flickering around the edges.
Above it, the faint afterimage of a word still glows from the rooftop.
The same word that was forming before everything collapsed.
The letters ripple, as if still deciding whether they are allowed to exist.
I watch them, breath held—
STOP.
The command slices through the air—not spoken, not whispered. It simply *appears* inside my skull.
I flinch.
Another presence fills the space behind me. I don't hear footsteps. I just *know* something is there.
I turn slowly.
And see the girl.
Not the nameless girl from the hospital.
A different one.
She stands a few meters away, barefoot on the grey surface. Her hair is white—not aged white, but like paper, like chalk, like something with no pigment left. Her eyes are dark, sharp, too focused. Her clothes hang off her as though she borrowed them from a stranger.
She looks fourteen.
She feels older than the city behind her.
Above her shadow—if she even has one—floats a word in a color I've never seen before. Not red, not white, not silver.
Something colder:
**WITNESS.**
My heartbeat thunders in my ears.
"Who are you?" I croak.
She tilts her head. "You shouldn't talk here. It listens."
"What does?"
"The thing that pulled you."
A chill crawls down my spine.
"The… the one that said 'Found you'?"
Her expression doesn't change.
"That wasn't it," she says softly. "That was only its breath."
I swallow hard.
"Where am I?"
She looks around the grey world.
"This is The Between."
"The… what?"
"Between breaths. Between names. Between choices. The place where your contract bleeds through."
I shake my head, backing up a step. "No. I didn't sign anything. I don't even remember—"
"That's the problem."
She steps closer.
"You made a bargain on instinct. On desperation. You ripped open something ancient. And now it's looking at you."
"I didn't mean to—"
"That doesn't matter," she says.
Silence stretches between us.
My pulse throbs painfully. "Where are Ardan and the girl?"
"Outside," she answers. "Trying to keep your body alive."
Something tightens in my chest.
"What do you mean *body*?"
"You're not fully here," she says. "You're suspended. Like breath caught in your throat."
I look down.
For a moment—just a flicker—my legs seem transparent.
Like smoke shaped into limbs.
I suck in a sharp breath.
The Witness watches calmly. "You shouldn't look at yourself here either."
"Why not?"
"Because The Between reflects intention. If you see yourself as slipping, you will slip. If you see yourself as breaking…"
She doesn't finish the sentence.
My fingers twitch.
I force my gaze away from my half-faded legs.
The Witness steps closer again, movements almost… careful. As if approaching a wounded animal.
"I'm going to give you one answer," she says. "Only one. Ask the right question."
My mouth dries. The world trembles slightly, like a breath held too long.
Just one question.
One chance.
Everything inside me screams to ask: *What am I? What did I do? What wants me? How do I stop this? How do I survive?*
But I force myself to breathe.
To think.
What question would Ardan ask?
I look at her, and my voice is barely a whisper.
"How do I get out?"
For the first time, the Witness's expression changes—barely, but I see something like approval.
"You hold onto your name," she says.
"But I don't know my name," I whisper.
"You know the one you give others," she says. "But that's not the same."
A crack spreads across the grey world. A fissure splitting through the air.
She glances at it.
"Time's up."
"Wait! What do I—"
She raises a finger to her lips.
"Don't trust the next voice," she whispers. "It will sound like someone you love. It always does."
The fissure widens.
Something pushes through.
Not a shape, not a body—
a noise.
A whisper.
It curls around my spine, warm and familiar, pulling at something deep inside me:
"Mark… please… come back…"
My blood freezes.
I know that voice.
It's my mother's.
The Witness steps backward, fading around the edges.
"Don't answer it," she says. Her voice echoes strangely now, distorted. "Whatever you do—don't turn around."
The whisper grows softer.
Sweeter.
Painfully familiar.
"Mark… sweetheart… it's okay now… just look at me…"
My knees tremble.
My mother's voice.
She's been dead for years.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
The Witness is almost gone now—just a smudge of white in the corner of my vision.
"Remember your question," she breathes. "You asked how to get out. So get out."
"How?" I choke.
"You pull yourself toward the last thing that still belongs to you."
"What does that mean?"
Her voice cracks with urgency:
"Your thread—pull it!"
My chest clenches in panic. "I don't know how!"
But then—
I feel it.
A faint tug.
Barely there.
Somewhere behind my ribs. A line stretching out of me—not upward or downward, but sideways, toward a world I can't see.
The whisper softens again.
"Mark… honey… don't make this harder… just face me…"
My vision blurs.
My body—what's left of it—starts to dissolve at the edges.
The Witness's voice rings out one last time:
"NOW!"
I grab the invisible pull with everything inside me and yank—
The world splits open—
And something screams in rage behind me.
Not my mother.
Something using her voice.
The grey world shatters like glass, and for a second I feel myself ripped through layers of reality—
Then—
A hand grabs my arm.
Warm.
Human.
A familiar voice roars:
"Mark! Breathe!"
I gasp, lungs exploding with cold air—
And snap back into my body—
Collapsing against the gravel of the rooftop.
Ardan is kneeling over me, both hands pressed to my shoulders, eyes blazing with fury and terror.
The nameless girl is crying, clutching my wrist like a lifeline.
And behind them—
the rooftop door is wide open.
Its shadow stretches across the floor like a tongue.
Above it floats a new word:
**RETURNED.**
Before I can say a single word—
a second word flickers to life above my own shadow.
This time it completes.
Fully.
Clearly.
Bright enough to burn.
Ardan sees it.
His face goes white.
"That's… impossible," he whispers.
The girl squeezes my hand, trembling.
"Mark… what does it say?"
I stare at my shadow—
At the word
carved above it
like a verdict
like a prophecy
like a warning:
**UNCLAIMED.**
My blood turns cold.
Something in the darkness behind the open door moves.
And the chapter ends.