The Between
1093 Words
The sky fell like shattered glass, but it didn’t cut.
It sang.
High, aching notes that spiraled into the void around them. Mira shielded her eyes instinctively, but when she looked again, the fragments of the broken Between hovered midair—floating like petals suspended in time.
They were standing on nothing. And yet, they did not fall.
Around them, the realm shimmered with incomprehensible beauty: bridges of woven light, rivers made of memory, stairways that led to stars that hadn’t existed in a thousand years. Souls moved like migratory birds, their trails leaving faint paths of gold in the darkness.
Thorne took a step beside her, the echo of his boot hitting something invisible. Sound still existed here—but logic did not.
Mira looked up at the Curator.
“You said I’ve already rewritten my fate.”
The Curator smiled softly. It was not a human smile—it was the kind gods might wear when watching mortals try to name the wind.
“You crossed the threshold when you touched the Book of Endings,” she said. “You were meant to die untouched, unmarked. But now your death echoes backward.”
“Backward?”
“Time doesn’t behave in the Between. Every choice you make here ripples in both directions. Your soul is in flux. And so is his.”
She nodded to Thorne.
Mira stepped protectively in front of him.
“What does that mean?”
The Curator’s eyes flashed like polished obsidian. “It means the veil is fraying. And if it tears—everything dies.”
---
Mira absorbed the words like ice in her lungs.
“This is about more than just me,” she murmured.
The Curator stepped forward, her robes trailing starlight. “You bonded with a reaper. That is not unheard of. But you did it with intent. With feeling. That is… sacred.”
Thorne's voice was quiet. “I didn’t mean to.”
“But she did,” the Curator said, turning to him. “And now the bond is symbiotic. The longer she lives, the more you become mortal. The more she touches death, the more she rewrites its laws.”
Thorne looked at Mira.
“You’re changing me.”
She whispered, “You changed me first.”
---
They followed the Curator through a shifting corridor of light that pulsed with whispered voices. Some called Mira’s name. Others wept. A few begged.
“Are they… people?” she asked.
“They’re remnants,” the Curator said. “Futures that died. Choices never taken.”
One stopped in front of Mira. A child. Pale eyes. Familiar.
“Mama,” it whispered.
Mira froze.
Thorne stepped beside her immediately, hand reaching for his scythe out of reflex—but there was no weapon here. Not in this place.
The Curator spoke gently. “It is not your child. It is a version of your soul. One that passed without ever meeting him.”
The child faded.
Mira turned, shaken. “There are versions of us…?”
“Endless ones. But only one path remains real.”
“Which one?”
The Curator stopped in front of a great mirror suspended in midair. Not glass—soulstuff. A reflection not of their faces, but of what bound them.
Their joined souls burned in the shape of an ouroboros—a serpent devouring its own tail.
“You are the first soulbound pair in ten thousand years to reach the Between.”
“Why?”
“Because the last ones destroyed themselves before the third gate.”
---
Mira looked down at her mark. It pulsed steadily now, brighter than before.
She turned to the Curator.
“What happens at the third gate?”
The Curator hesitated.
Then, with a voice like thunder swallowed in silk, she answered:
“You must choose—love, or legacy.”
“Explain,” Thorne said, stepping forward.
“You can sever the bond to save her life,” the Curator said, “but you will lose your memories. Your time. Your purpose. She will live. You will not.”
“Or?”
“Or you can keep the bond. Keep your memories. Continue rewriting fate. But she will not survive past the last gate unless the Fold is torn open. And if that happens, death as a force will unravel.”
Mira’s knees went weak.
Thorne caught her.
The Curator turned, voice soft again. “The Book of Endings is now incomplete. Your names stained it with contradiction. And now the balance asks for a price.”
Mira swallowed hard. “What if I’m not ready to make that choice?”
“You were never meant to be,” the Curator said. “That is what makes you worthy.”
---
When the Curator vanished, leaving them in the Between, Thorne was the first to speak.
“You should sever it,” he said.
“No,” Mira replied immediately.
“You should.”
“I won’t.”
Thorne turned away. “You don’t know what you’re giving up.”
“You don’t know what you’re offering to throw away.”
Their argument was soft, full of sorrow rather than anger. Two people trapped between possibilities.
“You could live a normal life,” he said.
“I don’t want normal. I want you.”
He turned. Pain etched across his expression.
“If we keep going, I might have to choose between your soul and everything else.”
“I trust you to choose me.”
Thorne stared at her.
Then kissed her.
It wasn’t desperate. It was quiet. Certain. The kind of kiss that left a promise stitched beneath the skin.
---
The Between began to collapse around them—its gates resetting. The Curator’s warning had set something in motion.
Mira grabbed Thorne’s hand.
“We need to go,” she said. “The third gate… where is it?”
Thorne looked down at the map now burned into her soulbind.
“Paris,” he whispered. “Under the Catacombs.”
Mira nodded.
Then, as the Between shattered like a dream dissolving in light, she whispered the words she hadn’t dared say before.
“I love you.”
Thorne didn’t speak.
But he held her hand tighter as the world rebuilt around them.
---
They woke up in a cemetery.
Real. Rain-wet. Cold.
And something had followed them through.
A shadow in the distance.
Watching.
Waiting.
And its voice, faint on the wind:
“One must die for the other to live.”
- Writer
