The knowledge arrived without explanation. This version of me—this waiting, watching version—belonged here. Had always been here. Would always be here, sitting in this empty classroom, watching for something that might never come.
A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with temperature.
"What are you looking at?" I asked. "What are you waiting for?"
Nothing. Her expression didn't flicker. Her hands didn't move.
The lights flickered.
Just once—a brief stutter, like a heartbeat skipping. But in that moment of darkness, I heard something. A sound that didn't belong. Low. Rhythmic. Almost like breathing, except it came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The other Lumi's eyes shifted.
For one fraction of a second, she looked at me. Through me. Into me.
And then—
I was back.
The bench. The cold stone wall. The pale winter light and the distant sound of students somewhere on the other side of the building, living their normal lives in their normal world.
I doubled over and vomited into the dead grass.
My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking—violent tremors that rattled my teeth and made my vision swim. Ipressed my palms flat against the frozen ground, trying to anchor myself, trying to remember how to breathe.
What was that?
The other visions had been distant. The wolf on the mountain, the cold, the howling—those felt like watching a film. Removed. Separate.
This had been different. This had beenhere. This campus. This classroom. This version of me, sitting alone in an empty world, waiting for something I couldn't name.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and sat back against the wall, pulling my knees to my chest. The shaking was subsiding, but the wrongness remained—a residue coating my skin, seeping into my bones.
The campus felt different now. Same buildings. Same paths. Same pale sky overhead. But underneath the normalcy, I could feel it.
Something waiting.
Something watching.
Something that knew I was coming, long before I arrived.
I stayed on that bench until the shaking stopped. Until my breathing steadied.
Chapter seven
I'd scrubbed my face with snow until my skin burned. The evidence of crying was mostly gone, replaced by the raw pink of cold exposure. A reasonable explanation if anyone asked.
No one was going to ask.
The hum flared before I heard his footsteps.
I closed my eyes. Counted to three. Opened them.
James rounded the corner of the shed, hands in his jacket pockets, breath fogging in the cold air. He stopped when he saw me, something flickering across his face—relief, maybe. Or worry. Hard to tell with him.
"Hey," he said.
"How did you find me?"
