Perfection.

Darkness again.

Autumna floated in it, silence pressing in, endless and suffocating. She reached inward, fingers trembling, tugging until a fragment of memory peeled away.

A soft glow bled from it, drifting like a lantern loosed into night. It fell slowly, swaying, until it touched the ground below.

The darkness shattered.

Light burst outward. When her vision cleared, she stood in a house she knew too well.

Her house.

The kitchen—wine glass on the counter, faint ring staining the marble. Toys in the living room—blocks tipped over, a stuffed rabbit face-down. The air smelled the same—detergent, oil, warmth.

Then, in the center of it all, ashes.

Her knees weakened. She stared, breath caught. Slowly, she pressed a finger to her temple.

Two golden threads unraveled from her head, dragging pain. She winced but pulled them free, letting them drift down to the ashes.

The change was instant.

Ash brightened, hardening into gold, shaping limbs, skin, hair, breath.

Her daughter. Her husband.

Kenji blinked, confusion in his tired eyes. Chiyo clutched his sleeve.

“Mommy?”

Autumna’s lips trembled. Her hands shook. They were back.

. . .

Days bled together in peace. Chiyo skipped to school, and Kenji returned at sundown. They ate together every night.

It was perfect.

“When can we see the cherry blossoms, Mom?” Chiyo asked one morning.

“We don’t need to go anywhere, honey.”

Autumna pressed her finger to her temple, pulling another glowing memory free. She tossed it into the void outside the door.

Light bloomed—grass rolling under a pale sky, cherry blossoms drifting in fragrant clouds.

“What do you think?” she asked softly.

Chiyo gasped, bolting into the pink sea, laughter ringing against the hollow sky.

Autumna turned back. Kenji stood in the doorway, half in shadow, silent, unreadable.

He always looked at her like that.

She felt it in her chest: a cold, hollow certainty that something was not right. That he had always been watching, even when she thought he wasn’t. She tried to reach him with her eyes, tried to smile, tried to make it feel like it was okay. But his stare was too deep, too still.

. . .

Time passed. One afternoon, Chiyo cut her finger. Autumna kissed the wound, golden thread coiling around it, sealing it like light.

“Thanks, Mommy!”

Autumna smiled in relief. Then she looked up.

Kenji was watching again. Same blank eyes. Same stillness.

He always looked at her like that.

She tried to shake it off. “It’s just—he’s tired,” she whispered to herself. “It’s just—he’s always been like that.” But the unease had dug too deep.

. . .

She slept beside him every night. Cherry blossoms whispered against the window. It should have been soothing.

But she couldn’t sleep.

She rolled over. His eyes were open.

They stared back at her, unblinking.

A sound tore from her throat. She tumbled from the bed, scrambling upright.

He stood at the edge, staring down with that hollow gaze.

“Yui.”

Her lips stretched into a brittle smile. “Baby, that’s not my name anymor—”

“Yes it is.”

His voice didn’t waver.

“You are Yui.”

The air thickened. She lowered her gaze. “My name is Autumna now. I’m not—”

“Yui.”

The word struck harder, echoing too long, more than one mouth speaking.

“Stop calling me that.” Her head throbbed.

“Yui.”

Her breath hitched. “Stop looking at me. Stop calling me that.”

He didn’t blink. His stare pinned her.

“Yui.”

The petals scraped violently against the glass.

“STOP!” she screamed.

He leaned forward, eyes hollow, voice no longer his—“Yui.”

The walls shook, a crack splitting across the ceiling. The petals outside burned, curling into black ash. Chiyo’s laughter echoed faintly, then cut off like a snapped string.

“No… this is mine. I made this. I brought you back—”

“You stitched us,” Kenji said, voice steady but colder than the void. “You think golden thread makes us real? You think you can bind ashes into flesh and call it love?”

He stepped closer, each footfall leaving only emptiness.

“You didn’t bring us back. You took us.”

“I saved you—” Her voice broke.

“You fed on us.” His stare bored into her. “Memory by memory. Until nothing of us was left but this shell you dress up.”

Images flickered — strangers she’d touched, every single one of her believers. threads of gold bleeding out of them and into her. A baby’s laugh. An old man’s song. A woman’s first kiss. Every stolen fragment, every pulse of warmth she had tried to claim, now mirrored back in her eyes.

“You’re not Autumna, you’re not my love.” he whispered. “You’re hunger. Wearing a name. Wearing our faces. You made a garden out of corpses and called it home.”

The floor peeled away into black nothing.

“You can build a thousand gardens,” he said, “but every blossom will rot. Because it was never yours to plant.”

His hands closed on her throat. Cold. Too cold.

“H-Haruto—please—” she croaked.

“You’ll never stop, Yui.” His voice rumbled low, terrifying in its steadiness. “You’ll take and take until there’s nothing left.”

The house collapsed — walls folding to ash, blossoms shriveling into dust.

Autumna thrashed, fingers flying to her temple out of instinct. A golden thread tore loose, trembling. Relief sparked for a heartbeat—warm, sweet.

But his grip only tightened.

“You even do it now,” he hissed, “even when you’re dying, you reach for another memory. Another taste. You can’t live without it.”

Gold spilled from her head in frantic strands, unraveling like veins of light.

“Look at you.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Addicted. Hollow. Nothing.”

The last word vibrated inside her, deeper than bone.

And for the first time, she understood the weight of every stolen smile, every borrowed laugh, every fragment she had ever claimed. She felt them slip through her fingers, one by one, until she was nothing but the echo of hunger itself.