The silence in the cottage was no longer peaceful. It was stifling—dense with unsaid things. Ambrose's absence didn't leave a hole; it left an echo, loud and vibrating, as if the Fold refused to forget him. As if it couldn't.
I'd been staring at the window for hours now. The trees outside swayed like they knew something I didn't. The shadows they cast were longer than they should have been, bending in angles that defied the sun's position. The world was wrong again. Not loud-wrong like before—no reversed voices or crimson skies—but subtly wrong. Familiarity with a missing note.
Jacob sat on the edge of the porch, his journal untouched beside him. Bobby fiddled with a compass that kept spinning, even without movement. Neither spoke much these days.
I opened Ambrose's notebook again. The pages were filled with his chaotic sketches and cryptic jokes. He had once drawn all of us as stick figures on the inside cover—except now, looking closer, one figure was rubbed out so completely it tore the page slightly.
And in the corner, someone—maybe Ambrose, maybe not—had scribbled:
> "Hold the fold."
I read it again.
> "Tell my mom I was a superhero."
---
It had been three days since we returned to this earlier time. Three days since Ambrose vanished. Three days of wondering if any of it had really happened.
We hadn't dared return to the node. Not yet.
Jacob insisted we shouldn't. "It's watching," he said yesterday. "The Fold isn't dormant. It's digesting."
I wasn't sure he was wrong.
That morning, Bobby found something outside. A trail of chalk markings. Fresh. One of them had a cape.
"I didn't draw that," he whispered.
But it was in Ambrose's style. His weird proportions. His exaggerated curls.
And that was when we knew: Something—or someone—was still out there.
---
We decided to go into the village. The same village we had passed through weeks—months?—ago. It felt different. People seemed distant, like they recognized us but weren't sure from where.
And then, as we passed the old church, she appeared.
The old woman.
Not a vision. Not an echo.
She stood on the porch, peeling an apple with a rusted blade.
"You finally made it back," she said, without looking up.
We froze.
"I told you not to enter the Fold unprepared," she continued. "And look what it cost you."
Jacob approached her slowly. "You remember us?"
"Remember?" She looked up, eyes sharp. "You're soaked into this place like blood in wood. Of course I remember."
Bobby stepped forward. "Then tell us what's happening. Why is everything still wrong?"
The old woman stared past us. "Because you didn't stop it. You paused the song. You didn't end it."
I opened my mouth to speak, but she raised a finger.
"You lost something," she said.
We all felt it.
"And until you find it," she whispered, "the Fold will keep unraveling. Time doesn't forget. It replays. Twists. Learns."
She handed me the peeled apple. I didn't take it.
She smiled. "He's not gone. Not if you know where to look."
Then she turned and disappeared into the church.
---
That night, I dreamed.
I stood in the Fold. Alone.
A mirror hovered in front of me. My reflection wasn't mine. It was Ambrose.
He grinned.
Then whispered: "Tell my mom I was a superhero."
And disappeared.
I woke up to Bobby shaking me. "Alex, you were speaking out loud."
"What did I say?"
"Something about... holding the Fold."
My skin went cold.
We weren't done.
---
The next morning, Evelyn came back.
Only it wasn't Evelyn. Not the one we knew.
She looked different. Same eyes. Same voice. But her aura had shifted—colder, more confident.
She found us outside the cottage.
"I've been looking for you," she said.
Jacob's mouth opened. Then closed.
Bobby stepped between us. "How do we know it's you?"
She answered without hesitation. "Because I know what Ambrose did."
I froze.
"And because," she added, "I know where he might be."
---
We let her inside.
She laid it out slowly. The Fold, she said, doesn't destroy. It archives. Splinters of reality get tucked into corners like forgotten dreams. And sometimes, people too.
"Ambrose could still be... alive?" I asked.
"Not alive," she said. "But not dead either."
Jacob was skeptical. "Why should we believe you?"
Evelyn turned to me. "Because you remember him. And they don't."
That hit like a hammer.
I hadn't noticed it.
But Bobby and Jacob—they had stopped mentioning Ambrose. Their journals had blank pages where his name should've been.
"What's happening to us?" Bobby whispered.
"The Fold is trimming you," Evelyn said. "Pruning excess weight. It doesn't like variables it can't control."
---
Later, Jacob cornered me.
"I don't remember him," he said. "Not really. I try, and it's like grabbing smoke."
"But he was real," I insisted.
Jacob stared at me. "Then prove it."
And I did.
I showed him the Polaroid. The chalk drawing. The page in Ambrose's journal.
Slowly, recognition returned to his face.
"Oh my God," he said. "We forgot him."
"No," I said. "The Fold made you."
---
Evelyn drew a symbol in the dirt. A spiral within a spiral.
"I've seen this," Bobby said.
"Where?" Evelyn asked.
"In a dream," he whispered.
"It wasn't a dream," she replied.
That night, we packed. We were going back into the Fold.
But this time, we weren't the only ones.
From the woods came laughter. Unfamiliar. Cold.
And when we turned, we saw them—three figures, standing in the dark. Smiling. Watching.
"Who are they?" I asked.
Evelyn's face darkened.
"They're what happens," she said, "when the Fold stops copying and starts creating."