Kitai didn’t hear the cute DA call out to her as she sprinted through the lobby. She didn’t hear the RA yell at her to stop running in the hallway. She didn’t hear the music thumping from the party next door to her dorm.

  All she could hear were the thoughts ricocheting around her skull.

  Who was that? How did the ground do that? People don’t just fade out in real life. That only happens in movies.

  She slammed her door shut, locked it, and crossed the room in three quick strides. The bag hit the desk with a thud. She dove under her blanket like it was a shield and waited.

  For the floor to melt again.

  For invisible hands to drag her under.

  For the bag to light up and teleport her into whatever “plane” that woman had crawled out of.

  Nothing happened.

  Kitai stayed curled under the covers anyway, the dim glow of her desk lamp turning the room into a small, shaky island against the storm outside. Rain battered the window. The wind howled. Somewhere down the hall, someone screamed with drunken laughter.

  She peeked out from under the blanket.

  The bag sat there. Ordinary canvas. No glow. No hum. No halo of eldritch doom.

  Just a bag.

  My mother sent that bag.

  The thought made her tremble. Her whole body throbbed with a weird cocktail of anxiety, nausea, and something like hope that she refused to name.

  Her mother. The woman she had never met. The woman who had left her on an orphanage doorstep like misdelivered mail.

  If she’s alive, why didn’t she ever come for me? Why now? Why like this?

  She tightened the blanket around her shoulders and sat up. Avoidance wasn’t going to make the bag vanish. Slowly, bare feet padding on the cold floor, she crossed the room.

  Her fingers shook as she unbuckled the flap and reached inside.

  Two objects.

  An envelope.

  And a compass.

  The envelope was plain, but the word scrawled on its surface made her stomach pitch. Whenever she tried to focus on the letters, her vision blurred, her brain slid off the word like it was greased. It was her name, she knew that much. And yet every time she tried to see it, nausea clenched her gut.

  She looked away, swallowing bile.

  The compass was cold. Not regular metal-on-a-rainy-day cold. Bone-deep cold. Its glass face was cracked, and where the cardinal points should have been were symbols she didn’t recognize, pulsing faintly beneath the fracture like slow heartbeat glyphs.

  She ran a fingertip across them and felt a small vibration, a tug of familiarity at the edge of her mind.

  Like she almost remembered this.

  Take this to your parents tonight.

  The courier’s words pushed through the fog in her head. Kitai glanced at the clock. They usually got home an hour from now. Enough time to eat, shower, and make the drive to Delray.

  She tossed the blanket off her shoulders and staggered into the tiny bathroom, flicking the light on.

  Her reflection stared back at her: red curls a wild halo, skin sallow, faint shadows under her eyes. She looked like someone who’d pulled an all-nighter while being haunted.

  From the other side of the wall came the muffled roar of a chorus: laughter, bass, the clink of bottles. Another party she hadn’t been invited to.

  “You look like a mess,” she told the mirror with a weak laugh.

  She turned on the faucet and splashed cold water onto her face. The icy slap jolted her, forcing her lungs to remember their job. She braced her palms against the sink and exhaled slowly.

  “Okay,” she whispered to herself. “Get answers first. Maybe there’s a good reason they never told me anything.”

  She tied her hair into a loose bun and held her own gaze for a long moment.

  …Yeah, right.

  The Deshawns were artists of avoidance. They didn’t lie, exactly. They pivoted. Deflected. Redirected. Ask about her birth parents, and somehow she’d wind up discussing coral bleaching or imperial trade routes. By the time she realized what had happened, there’d be a new book in her hands and her original question would feel childish, needy.

  Not this time.

  This time, she had a bag and a compass and a woman who vanished into thin air.

  This time, they were answering something.

  The Deshawns’ house had always felt less like a home and more like a curated exhibit. Two stories of clean, quiet wealth, with a balcony overlooking a lake that looked Photoshopped. The real heart of the place, though, was the basement: a library that put actual Librarys to shame. Shelves crammed with relics and artifacts, oceanic specimens in jars that definitely weren’t university-approved, maps in languages Kitai couldn’t read.

  They called themselves marine biologists.

  Some days she believed them.

  Most days she didn’t think about it at all.

  Standing now on the front step, bag strap biting into her palm, she didn’t.

  I could turn around, she thought. Go back to my dorm. Pretend the ground never swallowed me. Pretend a courier didn’t know my name and my mother.

  If they were secretly magicians or mole people or aliens, did she really want to know?

  Ignorance is bliss, someone had once said. Probably someone who never got answers either.

  Her grip tightened.

  No. This is my life. My mystery. I’m seeing it through.

  She unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  Immediately, something felt wrong.

  The house was dark. Not just “lights off” dark, but emptied dark. The kind of stillness that made her think of a set after the actors had all gone home.

  “Mom?” she called softly. “Craig?”

  No answer.

  She hit the hallway light. Nothing. The switch clicked, but the house stayed shadowed.

  The deeper she walked, the colder it got. Not air-conditioner cold. Basement in a horror movie cold.

  She stopped at the door leading down to the library.

  Voices floated up from below. None of them were Erica’s or Craig’s.

  “Do you think this is cheating?” a voice asked, light and melodic.

  “No,” another replied, youthful and flat. “The Hermit just wants it to be a fair game.”

  “She might not be ready,” the first voice said. “And now her caretakers have been taken. Who will explain anything to her?”

  A pause.

  “We can try,” the younger voice said. “As her envoy to the next Plane, it’s the least we can do.”

  Kitai’s hand tightened on the doorknob.

  Taken?

  Her heart lurched.

  “Hey, miss,” the melodic voice called, suddenly playful. “We know you’re there. Stop being a stranger in your own home and come say hello.”

  Her fingers trembled. She swallowed, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

  The basement was wrecked.

  Books lay scattered across the floor, shelves tilted or collapsed entirely. Display cases were cracked, artifacts toppled from their stands. A lantern lay shattered in the corner, its glass glittering in the half-light.

  And at the center of the chaos stood two figures.

  One was tall and skeletal, draped in a patchwork cloak of green and other colors that shifted when he moved. Where his eyes should have been, two diamonds sat in the sockets, polished and gleaming, reflecting the light of the lantern he now held in one hand.

  The other looked like a boy of maybe twelve. Shaggy green hair, a single curved horn jutting from his forehead. Wings instead of calves and feet, like feathered blades folded along his shins. A sword hung at his side, the hilt wrapped in worn cloth.

  Kitai’s voice came out hoarse. “What… happened here? Where are my parents?”

  Before she could brace herself, the air around her clenched.

  Wind slammed into her, invisible and total, lifting her off her feet. In a blur, the horned boy was in front of her, his hand clamping over her mouth. He smelled faintly of rain and something metallic. His eyes were clearer up close: deep, crystalline, with two golden shapes swimming lazily inside them.

  “Shhhh,” he whispered, his tone suddenly sharp. “Don’t be loud. If you scream, what took your parents might come back.”

  His fingers tightened just enough to make the point. “Nod if you understand.”

  Heart hammering against his palm, Kitai forced herself to nod.

  He released her and floated backward, wings rustling softly.

  The cloaked figure let out a low, amused chuckle. “Show-off,” he murmured. “You didn’t need all that drama. You probably frightened her half to death.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Kitai stumbled back a step, clutching the bag to her chest.

  The green-cloaked figure flicked a hand. A chair scraped across the floor and came to a gentle stop behind her. “Please,” he said, voice smooth and resonant, every word measured. “Sit. We’ll keep our distance, so you feel less threatened.”

  Kitai flicked a wary glance toward the boy.

  “Saon,” the skeletal figure said mildly, “would you kindly assure our guest you won’t touch her again without her permission?”

  Saon pulled a face. “Fine,” he muttered. “I promise not to grab her again, as long as she doesn’t scream. I’d rather not get my Soulframe shredded because of this errand.”

  She didn’t know what that meant exactly, but she understood threat when she heard it.

  “Is that acceptable?” the cloaked figure asked her.

  Reluctantly, she nodded and sank into the chair, still hugging the bag like a shield.

  “Good.” The skeletal man leaned forward, his diamond eyes glinting. “Your parents were meant to explain the Planes, the Games, and who you are. But they are gone, and I am here.” He spread his hands as if presenting a stage. “So. I suppose I’ll have to do it.”

  The library smelled of aged parchment and burnt wax. Shadows clung stubbornly to the upper shelves, where lantern light didn’t quite reach. Books pressed close together on the walls, the weight of their unwritten stories making the air feel thick.

  Kitai’s fingers dug into the strap of her bag. The room felt different now, like something had settled over it; a quiet expectation.

  Across from her sat the cloaked figure, now with his hood pushed back, revealing more of his angular, almost statuesque features. His patchwork cloak shimmered faintly. His diamond eyes pulsed with a soft internal glow.

  Saon hovered nearby, sitting cross-legged in the air, winged legs tucked beneath him like a sulking gargoyle.

  “What is reality to you, Kitai?” the cloaked man asked. His voice rolled out slowly, each word precise, like he was reading a poem only he could see. “Is it limited to what you can touch, taste, hear, and see?”

  Kitai blinked. “I mean… yes? That’s usually how reality works.”

  He smiled, but the expression never touched his eyes. “Then you’re like most residents of the Remembered Plane. You think reality is a set of physical rules. But to us, denizens of the Forgotten, reality is more… malleable. More narrative. Reality is the weight of stories. The shape of belief. The things so strongly imagined that the universe is forced to obey.”

  A prickle of unease climbed Kitai’s spine. “That sounds like something you say right before you tell me I’ve been hallucinating my entire life.”

  “You’re confusing her,” Saon cut in, swinging slightly from side to side in midair. “We get it. You want to sound cryptic. You sound like a pretentious book.”

  The cloaked man sighed. “And that, Saon, is why the Hermit will never take you as a student. You lack patience. And without patience, you can’t savor a story.”

  Saon flipped him off without breaking eye contact.

  Kitai waited for an explosion. Instead, the cloaked man just smiled faintly, as if that response had been exactly the one he wanted.

  “Let’s simplify it,” he said. His crystal eyes flared with a faint blue light. “Every soul’s weight is shaped by three things: belief, heritage, and luck. No matter how grand or insignificant, every being is stitched together by those three threads.”

  Kitai tried not to stare at the lights swirling in his eyes. The longer she looked, the more it felt like something was struggling somewhere behind them, reaching up through a lake she couldn’t see.

  A crumpled ball of paper smacked into her forehead.

  She flinched. “What the—”

  “Nice throw,” the man murmured, not looking away from her. “Now focus on my words, not the decorations on my face.”

  Scowling, Kitai picked up the ball and lobbed it back at Saon. He drifted neatly to the side, smirking.

  “Why those three?” she demanded. “Belief, heritage, luck. They don’t sound connected.”

  “Because to exist on any plane,” the man replied, “a soul must anchor itself through one of those. Belief. Bloodline. Serendipity.”

  He tapped his chest. “We of the Forgotten are born from belief. Strong belief. Obsession, sometimes. A people imagine something with enough devotion, and the universe sighs and gives it shape. That shape is us.”

  “Us,” Saon echoed, raising a hand and letting it flare briefly with green light.

  “The core of our Soulframes is story,” the man went on. “Hearsay, myth, fear. All the things your kind likes to pretend are just entertainment.”

  Kitai’s brain snagged on the word. “Soulframe.”

  Saon floated a little closer, eyes bright. “Think of it as the structure that holds your soul and your stories together. Glyphs, memories, fragments of fables… wrapped in a shape that lets you walk around and complain about homework.”

  “How do you… hurt it?” Kitai asked. “You said you could take damage.”

  Saon opened his mouth, but didn’t get the chance.

  Water snapped out of nowhere, curling around him in a sphere. He crashed to the floor, trapped in a wobbling bubble.

  Kitai jerked back in surprise.

  The cloaked man barely blinked. “Unlike you,” he said calmly, “Saon and I don’t have bodies native to this plane. What you see is just a projection—our Soulframes reflected into the Remembered world. That makes us… delicate, here. Break the frame, and we don’t bleed. We unravel.”

  The water bubble popped, drenching Saon. He sputtered, wings twitching.

  “Will you behave?” the man asked without looking at him. His crystal eyes briefly shifted from blue to a soft red.

  Saon muttered something that sounded like a string of curses and folded his arms.

  “Good.” The man turned back to Kitai. “Damaging a Soulframe is more than an injury. It is erosion. We leak stories. We lose ourselves. Very few know how to repair that kind of damage. Even fewer exist on your plane.”

  Kitai exhaled slowly. “Okay,” she said. “Fine. I’m… following. Kind of. But you still haven’t answered the important part.” She leaned forward. “Who sent you? And what does any of this have to do with me?”

  Saon let out a low whistle that echoed oddly in the room.

  The man cocked his head. “Didn’t a courier deliver something to you earlier today?” he asked.

  Kitai froze. “…She gave me a bag,” she admitted. “And a compass. Said there was a letter from my mother. Told me to read it after I talked to the Deshawns.”

  Silence dropped into the room like a stone.

  Saon drifted close, all the smugness gone from his face. He eyed the bag in her lap with sudden intensity. “That bag?” he asked.

  Kitai pulled it a little closer. “Yes.”

  He shot back to the cloaked man and leaned in, whispering fast.

  For the first time, the man’s diamond eyes shifted—green light pulsing softly within them. Then he laughed, low and delighted.

  “Oh, that cunning little vixen,” he said. “She was only supposed to pass on the letter. Instead she gave you the bag as well.” His smile thinned. “At least now you might survive this.”

  Fear slid, cold and slick, into Kitai’s spine. “Survive what?” she demanded.

  The light in his eyes dimmed. “We were sent,” he said, each word careful now, “by your real father. To escort you to the Forgotten Plane.”

  Something upstairs shattered.

  The basement door rattled in its frame.

  Fog began to seep under the crack, thick and slow, crawling along the floor toward them.

  The man stood sharply, cloak flaring. “They’re here.”

  Saon’s face drained of color. In a blur, he shot toward Kitai.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice suddenly stripped of sarcasm. “Just trust us for now.”

  Pain exploded in her shoulder.

  Kitai screamed—but Saon’s hand clamped over her mouth again.

  “Shhh,” he hissed. “If they hear you, we’re done.”

  Her eyes burned. “You stabbed me,” she snarled into his palm, voice shaking.

  “I needed your blood,” he said through clenched teeth, pulling a ring out of thin air and pressing it into her wound. “To anchor your Soulframe.”

  A symbol flared above her in pale light.

  Kitai’s breath hitched.

  Her hands blurred.

  She looked down and saw them going translucent, her fingers flickering at the edges. Her heart hammered faster, even as her body felt… lighter. Untethered.

  Saon slid the ring onto her pinky.

  The world lurched.

  Kitai turned.

  Her body laid on the floor, limbs slack, eyes closed, blood blooming through her shirt at the shoulder.

  A knock sounded at the basement door.