Chapter 20 – Ash Between Threads

The world around them fell apart.

The ash swirled around him like a sea, devouring towers, bridges, and open space. Yusuf paced through the falling square grasping the faceless child's hand more tightly than he intended. The piece Rae had given him throbbed in his other hand, seared into his own flesh.

The Memory Eater's laughter was gone—not a voice was pursuing them anymore—but that silence was more terrible.

They burst through a wall of smoke and staggered into somewhere else.

The ground that was underneath them was not dirt or stone but a smooth, shiny material, like paper stretched taut over a bottomless well. The Codex pitched and bucked, pages flying open and closed like a bellows as it was tossed by a Current that Yusuf could not feel.

The boy had fainted, Codex bearing down upon their body. Yusuf hit the ground hard beside him, gasping.

There was nothing for a long time except for his breath and the faraway groan of unwinding cosmos.

And slowly, he became conscious—that this was not a city, or a memory. This was the in-between. A seam. A frayed edge where some stories stopped and some haven't.

"Are we. safe?" he whispered.

The boy didn't budge. His face-less head twisted toward him, faceless and pale. "No place is safe. Not anymore."

The shard was faintly flickering in Yusuf's hand. He looked at it and it became brighter, and the Codex stopped, pages unfolding as it showed him rows of letters that were not his.

He was frozen. He recognized that hand.

His father's script.

The words had come out jaggedly, as one in despair:

".too many names. Too many lost. Yusuf, if you read this—don't believe the cracks. Don't— The ink had bleed, letters running like liquid spilled, until one word was legible:

"Son The page pulled away from itself, disintegrating into dust in Yusuf's hands.

His hollowed-out chest. He pressed the shard tighter, fearing that should he release it, the rest of what was important to him would also go.

The lad stood shaking, the Codex clutched close. "We can't wait. This seam ain't gonna hold."

He nodded, though his head was dazed. His father was alive. Alive and not a voice, not a echo—but alive. Somewhere in that tattered pattern of threads.

He looked once over his shoulder. The nothingness that trailed after them boiled and foamed among drifting ash. The city of Elarra was lost, Rae's sacrifice having come unraveled at the seams, yet the shard in his hand pulsed weakly, for her memory would not quite die.

"Let's go then," Yusuf whispered. His voice was rawer, yet more stable now.

They walked abreast into the pale nothing, through the trembling light of the shard.

Somewhere ahead, the next memory waited.

This time, Yusuf promised, he would not come home empty-handed.