The crack in the sky widened.
Thin as spider silk.
Heavy as a tombstone.
The sun blinked once
like a dying bulb
and everything grew two shades too pale.
Behind them
the footsteps grew louder.
Not rushing.
Not chasing.
Just walking.
Each step landed like it had always belonged to the world.
And the world simply let it in.
Hale swallowed, his throat dry as dust.
He grabbed Ivy's wrist
not gently
and pulled her closer.
"We have to go,"
he said, barely above a whisper.
Ivy hesitated.
Her smile cracked at the edges.
But she nodded.
They ran.
Except
Running felt wrong here.
Like pushing through water that didn't want to move.
The streets blurred.
The air thickened.
The sidewalks looped under their feet,
pulling them back into the same stretch of nothingness they tried to escape.
Hale didn't dare look back.
But he could feel it.
The walker.
Still coming.
Still steady.
Like it knew there was no hurry.
Like it knew he had nowhere else left to run.
Ahead
the world bled sideways.
Not streets now.
Not sidewalks.
Just jagged pieces of memory stitched together wrong.
A tree here
growing out of a shattered window.
A fence there
floating three inches above the ground.
A stop sign bent backward
letters melting like wax.
Tick.
Tick.
His mark burned.
The clock on his wrist?
Still stuck at 3:12.
He yanked Ivy through the broken landscape.
Her shoes scraped across shifting gravel.
Her breathing ragged.
He wasn't sure if she was even seeing what he was seeing.
Maybe she still thought they were walking to school.
Maybe the world looked normal through her eyes.
But Hale saw the truth now.
They weren't running forward.
They weren't escaping.
They were being herded.
Suddenly
a voice behind them.
Soft.
Familiar.
Almost tender.
"You can't outrun yourself, Hale."
The words slid into his ears like oil.
Hale stumbled.
The voice wasn't angry.
It wasn't mocking.
It was sad.
Almost... disappointed.
He dared to glance back.
Just once.
And what he saw
froze every cell in his body.
The thing walking toward them
It wore his face.
But not his face now.
Older.
Tired.
Eyes like cracked mirrors.
Smile like a man who had seen too many endings.
And behind him
stretching into forever
were thousands of other Hales.
All walking.
All broken.
All patient.
Tick.
Tick.
Somewhere deep inside him
something tore.
Like an old scar splitting open.
He squeezed Ivy's hand harder.
But when he looked at her again
she was already starting to blur.
Starting to glitch.
Like a bad signal losing reception.
He whispered, not sure if it was to her or himself:
"Don't let go."
Ahead—
a door appears.
Old. Wooden. Rotten.
Standing in the middle of nowhere.
No walls. No frame.
Just a door.
Waiting.
The only way forward.
Or maybe the last trap.