The Fold
671 Words
Darkness didn’t begin to describe it.
Mira thought she understood absence—the kind of darkness that crept beneath her hospital sheets, under her skin during those sleepless nights filled with quiet dread. But the Fold was something else entirely. It wasn’t dark. It was *null*.
No sound. No light. No time.
Not even pain.
Just *nothing*.
Yet she was conscious—somehow. Suspended in a space that shouldn’t exist, a void that pressed against her without touching her. Every heartbeat felt like a rebellion. Every breath echoed into infinity.
"Thorne?" she whispered, though no air moved. No voice emerged. But still—he heard her.
He appeared beside her like a ripple caught mid-motion. His form flickered, more soul than body now. The bond between them burned white-hot, their joined mark pulsing on her wrist like a desperate flame.
"You shouldn’t be able to breathe here," he said, voice sounding inside her mind. "And yet… you are."
"Because of you?"
He looked away. "Because of *us*."
The Fold was the primordial wound in reality—a rupture where death, life, time, and choice collapsed into each other. Reapers didn’t linger here. They passed through it like surgeons moving through infected flesh.
But Mira wasn't passing through.
She was *awakening*.
---
Shapes began to form.
Not tangible, but evocative. Thoughts made visual. Memories untethered from time. Mira saw flickers of her own life: her father leaving, the night she nearly drowned, the first time she stood on a stage and sang. Each memory looped, distorted, echoed in languages she’d never spoken.
And through them walked versions of *herself*.
One wore a wedding dress.
One was covered in blood.
One held a newborn.
They passed her with hollow eyes, unaware.
"The Fold shows you every path that was and might have been," Thorne said. "Every possibility your soul contains."
"Why?"
"Because you must *choose* which truth defines you. Only then will the gate beyond the Fold open."
"And if I choose wrong?"
He hesitated. "You become part of the Fold. Forever."
---
Mira's mark began to burn.
From within the shadows came a voice—her voice, but wrong. Cold. Dispassionate.
"You could end this. Sever the bond. Let him return. Let *yourself* return. Six months of fading is better than eternity lost."
Another version of her stepped forward. This one had no eyes. Only endless black voids.
"You can’t carry him through this. You’ll drown him. Reapers don’t belong to mortals."
Then came Thorne’s shadow.
"She won’t last," it whispered. "You were made to take souls, not tether them. She will unmake you."
Mira clutched her chest. "Is this what they meant by the cost?"
"Yes," Thorne said. "And this is only the first truth."
---
They reached a bridge made of stardust.
Beneath it: nothing.
Above it: everything.
Across it stood a mirror.
Unlike the one in the Catacombs, this mirror showed no lies. No projections. It reflected her as she *was now*. And behind her reflection stood a throne made of bones.
A voice boomed from the dark.
"SIT, OR DIE."
Mira stepped forward.
"This is your throne," Thorne said. "You entered the Fold with the soul of a queen. The gate responds."
"I’m not a queen."
"You are if you sit."
She approached the throne.
Memories crashed into her. Her life. Her pain. The choice she never made. The voice of her mother. The touch of Thorne’s hands.
And she sat.
The Fold screamed.
---
The throne accepted her.
The mark on her wrist split open, revealing golden light. Her skin glowed. Not like a human. Like something ancient reborn.
Thorne fell to his knees. Not in submission. In awe.
"You are rewriting the laws," he whispered.
The Fold convulsed.
The path forward emerged—a gate of ivory and shadow, sealed in blood.
"This leads to the Eidolon Court," Thorne said. "The place where Death *answers*."
Mira turned to him.
"Then let’s make them listen."
And together, hand in hand, they stepped through the last veil.
---
- Writer
