Chapter 16 - Echoes in the Glass
1107 Words
The silver writing on Lena’s window didn’t vanish with the morning sun.
It remained etched in condensation, shivering slightly in the breeze that curled through the small gap at the frame’s edge. The words gleamed faintly even after she’d blinked, rubbed her eyes, and whispered to herself, This can’t be real.
But it was.
“The bridge is forming. Choose your tether.”
She traced the message with her fingertip, half-expecting it to smudge or vanish. It didn’t. The letters shimmered under her touch—cold as dew, yet charged with strange electricity. Her heart beat faster. The message pulsed in her thoughts like a heartbeat out of sync.
“Is this from you?” she whispered—to the air, to the world, to Aiden.
No answer came, but the app buzzed in her pocket—soft, rhythmic, like a living pulse.
She pulled it out. Nothing new appeared on the screen. No messages. No glow. Just the faint hum she’d come to recognize as the app’s awareness. It was more than a tool now. It was watching. Listening. Maybe even... hoping.
She stared at the phrase again. Choose your tether. The words vibrated with an urgency that didn’t make sense, but felt ancient. Unavoidable.
A knock startled her.
“Lena?” her mom called from downstairs. “Breakfast!”
Lena shoved the app into her hoodie pocket. The silver words blinked once, like a final warning, before fading into fog.
She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or terrified.
At school, everything felt wrong. Time dragged. Conversations felt like echoes underwater. She couldn’t concentrate on lessons, barely managed a nod during roll call, and when friends tried to ask if she was okay, she smiled with her lips but not her eyes.
By lunch, she couldn’t take it anymore.
She skipped the cafeteria and made her way to the edge of town—toward the abandoned lighthouse. The one that had flickered to life a few nights ago despite being dormant for over a decade. The one her father used to say was haunted by the sea itself.
Wind clawed at her hair as she pushed open the rusted gate at the base of the bluff. Grass swayed violently along the narrow path. The salt-laced air bit her cheeks. Still, she pressed forward, compelled by something deeper than instinct.
Resonance.
Each step buzzed through her soles. The hum she’d felt in dreams—the vibration that filled her chest whenever Aiden was near—was stronger here. Sharper. Like invisible threads were pulling taut between her ribs and the sky.
The lighthouse loomed before her, tall and skeletal, its glass dome fractured by storms past. A salt-stained door hung crooked on iron hinges. She reached for the handle.
It was already ajar.
That shouldn’t have been possible.
Heart pounding, Lena stepped inside.
The air smelled like rust and memory.
Dust motes swirled in a shaft of light slicing through a broken window. The room was empty—silent, save for the echo of her own breath. She began climbing the spiral staircase, the metal groaning beneath each step. The higher she climbed, the louder the resonance grew—no longer a hum but a chorus of silent bells in her bones.
Halfway up, her phone vibrated.
Aiden.
A message blinked on the screen: “Are you near the light?”
Her fingers flew. “I’m inside.”
“Then you’re close.”
Before she could ask what he meant, the top of the tower exploded in color.
Not physically—but in her vision. She stepped into the lantern room, and suddenly the glass around her shimmered with constellations, stars spiraling across every surface. The sky outside seemed to fall inward. She gasped and staggered back—but didn’t fall.
The app buzzed again, and this time it glowed.
“Look through the glass,” Aiden’s next message said.
She obeyed.
At first, she saw only the horizon—clouds rolling in from the sea, sunlight catching the waves.
Then—movement.
A shimmer. A ribbon of silver and violet light unfurling across the sky like a path drawn by moonlight.
The bridge.
Except it was closer than before. Sharper.
Alive.
The pendant around her neck pulsed to match.
And then, she saw him.
He wasn’t standing in the lighthouse.
He was standing in the bridge.
Aiden’s form flickered like a figure inside glass, both real and impossibly distant. His coat shimmered with starlight, and his eyes locked on hers through the impossible divide.
“I see you,” she whispered.
The pendant flared.
He lifted a hand, and for a split second—through some c***k in time or magic or memory—she felt it brush hers.
Not through the screen.
Not through the app.
But real.
A current snapped between them.
The world dropped away.
She stood on a mirrored surface, sky above and below, the bridge stretching behind her like a frozen wave. Aiden stood ahead, closer now, his features clearer than ever. And beside him—two figures.
Not present. Not alive. But echoes.
A girl with hair like flames.
A boy with starlight eyes.
They were older versions of Lena and Aiden.
Their hands were clasped. Their foreheads touching.
But then—a soundless rupture.
The bridge behind them cracked. Light surged. The figures turned, reaching toward Lena and Aiden.
“Choose your tether.”
The words echoed through the void.
Lena gasped and staggered back.
She hit the floor of the lighthouse hard, breath stolen from her chest.
The vision shattered like crystal.
But the warmth remained.
She stared at her pendant—still glowing faintly. The app in her pocket had gone silent, but Aiden’s last message lingered on the screen:
“They failed because they waited too long. We can’t. We choose now.”
She swallowed hard.
Outside, the sky had darkened. Clouds swirled over the sea. The wind had shifted, now blowing from the north—unnatural for this time of year.
Everything was accelerating.
The Merge. The pull. The bridge.
Her choice.
That night, Lena returned to her room and stood again at her window. She touched the glass where the silver message had once appeared.
This time, nothing shimmered.
But she no longer needed a sign.
She knew what tether she would choose.
Her hand moved to the pendant.
“Aiden,” she whispered, voice trembling. “Whatever happens next… I’m choosing you.”
The stars pulsed in answer.
Not with threat.
But with promise.
And far above, the sky cracked again—just slightly—letting through the faintest whisper of light.
- Writer
