The rain didn't stop when I left the café.
It followed me.
Not in the dramatic sense—no lightning splitting the sky, no streets flooding in minutes. It was steady, persistent, soaking through layers until everything felt heavier than it should. My clothes clung to my skin. My thoughts clung to the words she had left behind.
You were meant to close it.
I walked with no clear direction, letting the city decide my path. Cars hissed past on wet roads. Neon signs bled color into puddles. Every reflective surface felt watchful now, like an eye that might blink if I stared too long.
Close the seam.
I didn't even know where it fully was.
My apartment building rose ahead of me, familiar and suddenly unwelcoming. As I entered the lobby, the automatic doors hesitated before sliding shut behind me—just long enough to make my pulse spike.
"Don't," I muttered under my breath. "Don't start."
The elevator took longer than usual. When it finally arrived, the interior mirror caught my reflection at an odd angle, stretching me slightly taller, thinner.
"Behave," I said again.
The reflection obeyed.
For now.
Inside my apartment, I stripped off my coat and dropped it onto a chair. Water pooled on the floor beneath it, spreading slowly, deliberately. I didn't remember spilling that much.
I stood there, listening to the faint drip of water, the hum of electricity in the walls, the city breathing beyond the windows.
"You were meant to close it."
The words felt heavier in silence.
I pressed my back against the door and slid down until I was sitting on the floor. My hand found the pearl without thinking. It was warmer than usual, almost uncomfortably so, as if it had been waiting for this moment.
"What does that even mean?" I asked the empty room. "Close it how?"
The air shifted.
Subtly.
Like a held breath being acknowledged.
The lights dimmed—not flickered, but dimmed evenly, as if someone had turned a dial. Shadows thickened at the edges of the room, creeping closer, stretching toward me with quiet intent.
"EG," I said sharply. "If this is you, now would be a good time."
No answer.
Instead, the mirror across the room darkened, its surface losing depth, becoming something closer to still water. My reflection appeared a moment later than it should have, eyes lifted as if it had been waiting to be summoned.
"You said it out loud," it said calmly.
I didn't answer.
"You weren't supposed to," it continued. "Names anchor. You know that."
"You looked scared," I said, forcing my voice steady. "Back at the café."
The reflection smiled faintly. "Because closing the seam doesn't just seal doors."
My stomach tightened. "What does it do?"
"It collapses what's between," it replied. "Including paths you used to survive."
The pearl pulsed, sharp and insistent.
"So I die," I said flatly.
The reflection tilted its head. "Not exactly. You become… singular."
The word sent a chill through me.
"I don't want that," I said.
"You never want what ends things," it replied. "That's why you were chosen. You hesitate."
Anger flared, cutting through the fear. "You keep saying that like it's a compliment."
"It is," the reflection said. "Hesitation creates space. Space creates seams."
"And closing them?" I asked.
The reflection's smile faded. "Requires conviction."
The lights surged back to full brightness.
EG stood by the window, rain streaking down behind him like a moving backdrop. He looked tired in a way I hadn't seen before—older, worn thin by something that didn't respect time.
"You shouldn't listen to it alone," he said.
I didn't look away from the mirror. "So it's true."
"Yes."
I turned to him. "You knew."
"I suspected," he corrected. "I hoped otherwise."
I laughed weakly. "You hoped I'd just… stabilize things forever?"
"I hoped you'd choose yourself," he said quietly.
"And closing the seam isn't that?"
"It's choosing an end," EG replied. "And ends are… expensive."
I stood, the pearl warm against my palm. "Then why bring me back at all? Why not let the city erase everything?"
"Because erasure doesn't fix fractures," he said. "It just hides them. They grow back."
I thought of the woman in the café. Of her delayed reflection. Of a name dragged back into existence.
"Who else remembers?" I asked.
EG's silence was answer enough.
The reflection in the mirror stepped closer to the surface, eyes intent. "You're running out of pauses," it said. "They're watching now."
As if summoned, the rain outside intensified, drumming against the windows with unnatural rhythm. In the glass, shapes moved—too many reflections overlapping, misaligned.
My chest tightened.
"If I close it," I said slowly, "what happens to you?"
The reflection met my gaze. "I stop being separate."
"And the city?"
"It forgets how to bend," EG said. "Which means it breaks more honestly."
I closed my eyes.
Between one breath and the next, I felt it—that familiar space opening, inviting, dangerous. Power and loss tangled together, impossible to separate.
When I opened my eyes again, the room felt smaller. Closer.
"Then tell me how," I said.
EG's expression hardened—not with fear, but with resolve. "First, you have to find where the seam was born."
"And where's that?"
He looked at the mirror.
"At the place you first chose rain," he said. "Instead of the door."
Thunder cracked overhead, loud and final.
For the first time, the sound didn't make me flinch.
It sounded like a beginning.