The peace lasted one month.
Marcus had almost convinced himself it was real. Lily had returned to her life, slowly healing from her time in the space between. Anna had thrown herself into her research, trying to understand the full scope of what they had faced. The survivors had scattered, building new lives, carrying the memory of everything they'd been through.
But Marcus could feel something wrong.
It started small—a fraying at the edges of his perception. The threads of connection that bound everything together were weakening, fading, like old rope stretched too thin. He tried to ignore it at first, telling himself it was just his imagination, the residue of everything he'd been through.
But it kept getting worse.
One morning, he woke to find a thread completely severed. A connect
