The image flickers, stutters, then dissolves into ash. I’d known Charlie had affected her—but I’d never understood how deeply.
A tear slips down my cheek, but I don’t have time to wallow, because the second slit pulls me in with a cold so sudden it feels like teeth sinking into my skin. The very air freezes on my tongue when I inhale.
A body lies before me on the floor.
Twisted. Still.
Their eyes open and glazed.
It’s me. Again.
Ryder kneels over the corpse, his hands drenched in my blood, his face stripped bare of every mask he wears. His expression is a raw, shattering mix of horror and guilt, the kind that doesn’t fade with time.
“I didn’t mean to—” His voice breaks. “Asha, please—please wake up—”
My breath catches painfully, as if my ribs have clenched around my lungs. He sobs into me, my limp body cradled in his arms.
Ryder… this is what’s been haunting you?
This is the reason you have been pushing me away—I managed to save myself last time… but who’s to say I could if it happened again.
You think you’ll destroy me.
The ache in my chest is sharp enough to steal my breath.
“This fear belongs to Ryder,” I manage, though it feels like forcing broken glass through my throat.
“He’s terrified he’ll lose control and hurt me.”
Ryder’s sobbing form fractures like a mirror struck by a stone. It splinters into light, then disintegrates into dust.
The third slit glows faintly, exhaling a soft mist that coils around my ankles as I step through. It’s cooler here, gentler, almost deceptively harmless.
Through the haze, I see myself again, this time alive and unharmed, walking with steady, unshakable confidence. I don’t look back even once.
Behind me stands River.
But not the River who hides behind sarcasm and smirks, who jokes his way through life. This River looks utterly gutted. Stripped of bravado, stripped of the grin he uses as armour.
Desperate.
Small.
Breakable.
He reaches toward the version of me walking away, fingers trembling like the ground beneath him is splitting apart.
“Asha… please. Don’t choose him. Don’t leave me behind,” he begs, his voice breaking, “choose me.” he runs towards the version of me, grabbing onto her hand, but she just slips out of his grip as if made up from air. River drops to his knees with his head in his hands.
Something in my chest clenches so violently that it knocks the breath out of me.
River, you hid this so well I never even saw it.
I thought it was just a crush. Over before it started.
But now I can’t unsee it.
My throat tightens around the heaviness sitting inside it.
