For a moment, I couldn't tell if I was falling or standing still.
The ground beneath me pitched sideways like the floor of a sinking ship. The air ripped past my ears, and the corridor—if it could still be called a corridor—stretched, bent, and twisted until it no longer resembled the hospital at all. Every surface rippled like liquid, as if existence had turned into a single, trembling veil.
My ghost husband's silhouette loomed in front of me, a dark figure carved from absence. I couldn't see his face yet—only the outline of a man suspended between worlds.
The lights above me flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then wildly, like frantic eyelids fluttering open and shut.
Each flash changed the world around me.
White hospital hallway.
Dark decayed corridor.
White again.
Rot again.
White—
Black.
White—
Smoke.
White—
Ash.
"The lights…" I whispered. "Stop. Please—stop—"
But they flickered harder as if reacting to my fear.
He stepped closer.
The air thickened and grew cold. My lungs tightened. My fingers went numb. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but my legs were rooted to the pulsing floor.
When the next surge of light burst overhead, I finally saw his face.
Or rather—I saw what used to be his face.
His features flickered like the lights did: sometimes whole, sometimes distorted, sometimes blurred away entirely. His eyes were dark hollows, shifting in and out of shape with each flash.
"Jenny," he whispered.
I stumbled backward. "Stay away from me."
"You returned." His voice cracked like old paper. "I knew you would."
"No," I gasped. "You pulled me in. You took her. Where is she? Where's my daughter?"
The lights snapped off.
Total darkness swallowed everything.
My breath caught. My pulse slammed in my ears.
Then—
A single overhead bulb crackled back to life, swinging slightly from a torn wire.
I saw a corridor again. But not the hospital corridor.
This one was older. Rotting. The walls were cracked open like ribs, exposing metal beams like rusted bones. The floor was uneven, broken tiles scattered like teeth. Pools of stagnant water glistened darkly beneath flickering bulbs.
The abandoned hospital from the Boundary.
I was inside it again.
"No," I whispered, panic filling my throat like water. "No no no—this place is gone. It was gone."
"You hoped it was gone." His voice slithered closer, though his body stayed where it was. "But time means nothing here. Places do not vanish. They wait."
Another light flickered on down the corridor, revealing peeling wallpaper and a half-collapsed ceiling.
Flash.
The wallpaper crawled with mold.
Flash.
The mold turned into handprints.
Tiny handprints.
My stomach lurched. "Where is she? What did you do to her?"
He finally moved.
It wasn't walking.
Not exactly.
His form blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again as he glided closer, each flicker revealing him at a different distance. One moment he was twenty feet away. The next—ten. The next—five.
I backed away until my shoulders hit a wall that pulsed beneath my skin like living tissue.
"She is safe," he whispered.
"Safe?" My voice rose. "Safe where? With who? With you?"
"She is here."
His tone softened.
"Everything you love comes here, Jenny. Sooner or later."
My heart hammered so hard I thought my chest might crack. "You don't get to touch her. You don't get to take her. She's mine. She isn't part of this world."
"She is part of you."
He took another step.
"And you belong here."
"No," I spat. "I escaped you once. I'm not staying here. I'm getting her back and leaving."
A tremor rippled through the floor. A low groan echoed through the ruined building, like the place itself was waking up.
He tilted his head.
The way he always did when he was amused.
"You cannot leave a place that is inside you."
My breath froze.
"What… what does that mean?"
His smile flickered in and out of existence with the lights.
"You carried the Boundary with you," he whispered. "You brought it into your world. Piece by piece. Memory by memory."
"N-no—" I stammered. "I forgot. I healed—"
"You hid," he corrected. "Healing is not hiding."
My hands shook. I pressed them against the trembling wall behind me to steady myself.
Another light sputtered overhead and burst into sparks. The entire corridor went dark again.
I held my breath.
A scraping sound echoed beside me. Then another. Then dozens more—like fingernails dragging along the inside of walls.
"Stop," I whispered. "Please stop—"
But the scraping became louder.
More urgent.
More desperate.
Hands.
So many hands.
Clawing from inside the walls.
Trying to get out.
I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes shut.
A hand touched my cheek.
I yelped and stumbled sideways.
But it wasn't him.
At least—I prayed it wasn't.
The lights flickered back on, and I saw a shape crouched on the floor near my feet. A small shape.
A child.
My heart leapt—
"Baby?!"
But when the child lifted their head, I recoiled.
It wasn't my daughter.
It was the little boy from the Boundary—the one who used to stand in the ruined hallway holding a tattered stuffed rabbit. The same one who always watched me with eyes too old for his small body.
Except now his eyes were sunken and glassy. His skin was gray, almost translucent.
He whispered, voice brittle:
"You shouldn't have come back."
"I didn't choose to!" I snapped, voice cracking. "He pulled me! I'm looking for my daughter—"
The boy lifted a trembling hand and pointed down the dark hallway.
"She's there," he whispered. "But you shouldn't go."
My blood turned to ice. "Why not?"
He lowered his gaze. "Because the lights stopped protecting you."
I blinked. "What?"
He opened his mouth to explain—
But the lights shut off again.
A scream tore the air.
His.
Something dragged the boy into the darkness so fast I only saw the blur of his body vanish into a shadow that moved like water.
I screamed and reached out blindly. "No—NO!"
Silence.
Panting, trembling, I backed against the nearest wall—though the wall pulsed again beneath my palms like a heartbeat.
My ghost husband's voice whispered from the pitch-black darkness.
"You cannot save what belongs to this place."
Fear spiked through me. "She doesn't belong here!"
"She is yours," he said softly.
"And you are mine."
The lights flickered once.
Twice.
Then exploded into full brightness.
The entire hallway shone in harsh white.
The transformation was complete.
The hospital was gone.
I stood in the fully decayed, abandoned Boundary hospital—every wall rotting, every tile cracked, wires hanging from the ceiling like exposed veins. The air smelled like dust, mold, and faint, lingering smoke.
I collapsed to my knees, my breathing ragged. I covered my face with my trembling hands.
"Please," I whispered. "I just want my baby…"
The lights hummed above me—steady now, but colder. As if they weren't lights at all, but eyes.
Watching.
Judging.
Waiting.
Something shifted behind me—slow footsteps, dragging lightly across the floor.
I forced myself to stand and turned around.
He stood at the far end of the corridor.
My ghost husband.
His shape was fully visible now—no more flickering. His body was tall, shoulders broad, clothes old-fashioned and torn. His skin held a bluish undertone, like someone pulled from deep water. His eyes—unfathomably dark—fixed on me without blinking.
He raised one hand and pointed to a door at the end of the hallway.
A door I recognized.
The nursery.
My pulse dropped.
"No," I whispered. "Not there."
He smiled slowly.
"You must follow the lights."
And as if obeying him—the bulbs overhead began turning on one by one in a long trail leading toward the nursery door.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Each light snapped on like a command.
"Stop!" I shouted, shaking my head. "Stop it. Don't—don't lead me there—"
But the corridor obeyed him, not me.
The lights kept turning on until the only path visible was the one leading to the nursery.
Every other direction fell into absolute darkness.
I backed away. "No. No. Please. Not that room. I can't—"
"The only way to find her…"
His voice drifted through the air like smoke.
"…is through where you lost everything."
My throat tightened painfully.
And somewhere—
far down the lit hallway—
I heard a small, familiar voice.
A whimper.
A cry.
"Mommy…"
My daughter.
I froze.
Tears blurred my vision instantly. "Baby?!"
"Mommy… help…"
Her voice trembled.
Frightened.
Real.
I looked down the hallway again. At the one lit path. At the door at the end.
I didn't want to enter that room.
I didn't want to relive what happened there.
I didn't want to see the baby—the one we lost—the one that almost destroyed me.
But my daughter was calling for me.
I wiped my tears with shaking hands and faced him.
His hollow eyes watched me with a quiet satisfaction.
"I'm coming for her," I whispered. "Not for you."
He bowed his head slightly, as if indulging me.
I took one step toward the nursery.
The lights flickered approvingly.
The world around me darkened.
And the Boundary swallowed me whole.
---