Chapter Text
Loki had been gone for weeks, and Dora did not know why.
All she had was the message that had appeared one morning in the thin film of dust atop her dresser—brief, meticulous, maddeningly vague, the words drawn with such clean precision that she had frowned at it, caught for a moment on the strange, deliberate use of magic.
Too many eyes. Lay low. Stay away. I will be in touch.
By the time she had finished reading, the letters had already begun to loosen beneath her gaze, their sharp edges softening, breaking apart, sinking back into the grey smear of neglect. A moment later the surface looked untouched again—almost innocent. As if it had never spoken.
Dora kept staring anyway, heart thudding hard enough to hurt, waiting for something else to happen. Another word. Another sign. Some small mercy of explanation.
Nothing came.
Absurdly, she registered that her room desperately needed cleaning—but the thought slipped loose before it could settle.
The worry hit a heartbeat later—sudden, crushing, cold enough to hollow her out. The secrecy. The caution. The almost paranoid precision of the spell. It spoke of someone who expected to be watched—who no longer trusted even empty rooms to remain empty. Loki did not move carelessly. He did not hide without reason. If he had vanished, then something had forced his hand.
That should have comforted her.
It didn’t.
Because absence had a language of its own, and Dora had learned it young. Silence did not need to explain itself to wound. It only had to stay.
After that, spiralling had been effortless. The questions came sharp and fast, ricocheting through her without landing. Where was he? What had happened? Was he hurt? Was this danger, strategy… something worse?
Was he safe?
Was he coming back?
Each day, those questions were met with the same silence—drawn thin, warped by everything she did not know. A small, insistent voice told her something had to be very wrong. He wouldn’t just leave her like this. Wouldn’t just disappear.
Except… this wasn’t the first time he had vanished.
The thought came unbidden, sharp as a splinter she could not dig out.
Last time, there had been no note. No careful message hidden in spell-work. Just an absence—clean, absolute. A silence that stretched until even memory began to fray at the edges, until she had caught herself wondering whether she had simply imagined him.
That had been over six months ago, after he had learned the truth. After discovering what she was to him. After discovering she had known first.
This was different, she told herself. It had to be external. Trouble. Enemies. Danger.
Not her.
And yet—
the mind was treacherous in the quiet hours. It did not need truth. It only needed silence.
And in silence, it always turned inward.
Had she done something wrong again?
The next few days passed on an edge so fine it hurt to breathe, each hour drawn tight with it—fear, uncertainty, the slow grind of waiting. She found herself drifting past the park that overlooked the safehouse whenever she could, her gaze lifting instinctively to the windows, searching for a light that never came.
She did not clean the dresser.
The dust remained undisturbed, a thin grey altar to the possibility of his return. She told herself it was laziness—that she simply hadn’t gotten around to it, that it hadn’t seemed urgent.
But she checked it every morning.
And every night.
The days drifted on, and nothing changed. Loki sent no further word, left no message, made no attempt to check in. Dora found her thoughts snagging on his absence at the most mundane moments—waiting at the bus stop, scanning tickets in the dim hush of the cinema, stirring pasta in the quiet kitchen. It threaded through everything, constant and corrosive, wearing grooves into the shape of her days.
And slowly, the worry began to rot.
Anger bled through the cracks—slow at first, then sharper, easier to reach for. He could have told her. Explained what was going on. Properly. To her face. After everything, she thought she deserved that much. But no—that would have required honesty. A conversation. The kind of thing he always sidestepped when it actually mattered.
Instead, he had just gone. Vanished. Left her behind like she was something inconvenient.
Like she was easy to leave.
The thought landed harder than the rest, settling somewhere deep and familiar. It wasn’t new. It had never been new—just quieter, for a while.
That was the part that burned.
Not just that he had left—but that she had trusted him not to. That she had taken whatever it was he offered—half-answers, sharp edges, moments of something almost like care—and built something solid out of it. Something that could hold.
Stupid. The word came quick and clean, a blade she had meant to throw that turned in her hand and bit deep.
Well—fuck him.
Let him stay gone.
Wait—
No.
The heat faltered, collapsing in on itself almost as quickly as it had risen. She pressed her lips together, jaw tight.
She didn’t mean that. Not really.
More days passed. The questions did not stop—only deepened. No amount of turning them over brought her closer to the truth, nor to peace. If anything, the repetition carved something darker into her: that in the end, the reason did not matter.
They all cut the same way.
He had left her.
After that realisation, Dora forced herself into the swing of routine, clinging to it like a lifeline despite how unglamorous it was. Life went on as it had before—work, home, sleep—a narrow loop repeated until it lost all distinction. What unsettled her most was how easily the days slipped back into place, closing over his absence as though it were permanent. As though nothing had changed.
Perhaps nothing had. The thought arrived softly, almost reasonably, which made it worse.
There was no deserted bedroom to linger in, no photographs to turn face-down. No proof that Loki had ever existed in her life at all. Just a quiet hollow where something essential had been—a space that remained stubbornly silent no matter how closely she listened.
When her mother died, there had been weight to it. A funeral. Condolences. Photographs she could not bear to look at and could not bring herself to throw away. Grief had shape then, something she could press her hands against and know it was real.
This was different.
If Loki didn’t come back, what would remain? A handful of half-finished conversations. A safehouse she no longer had reason to visit. Memories that sounded increasingly improbable when spoken aloud, like stories she had told herself often enough to believe.
Maybe that was all it had ever been.
She hadn’t realised how much Loki had altered her life until she was left to reckon with the shape of his absence—and how easily the world seemed willing to erase him from it.
Four more days passed. Her birthday arrived without ceremony, slipping into the day as though it had no more weight than any other. She had planned to mention it to him the week before—make a joke of it, soften it into something inconsequential, the way she always did when something mattered too much.
But she hadn’t had the chance. He had already been gone.
And she found herself wondering—despite every rational argument she could muster—whether he had left because staying would have required something he could not give. The thought settled deeper than she liked, refusing to shift once it took hold.
The days after that blurred together.
Popcorn, Dora thought, was the worst invention known to man. It scattered too easily, found its way into every crevice, and ground itself beneath careless feet into a sticky grit that fused with the carpet.
Though—she paused, eyeing an upturned tray of nachos a few seats down, its flimsy container collapsed in on itself, fluorescent cheese slowly bleeding into the fabric—there were worse things to spill.
She sighed, long and heavy, and retrieved the blue roll and cleaning spray she had abandoned at the end of the row. Crouching beside the mess, she pressed the paper down harder than necessary, working at the stain with a focus that bordered on punitive.
She needed a new job. A better one.
Maybe she shouldn’t have dropped out of university.
The thought lingered just long enough to irritate her before she shoved it aside, unwilling to follow where it led.
Voices drifted in from the corridor—loud, bright, too full of energy—growing closer. Dora recognised them a second before they reached her.
“We’ve come to help!”
The voice rang out across the empty screen, cheerful to the point of intrusion.
Dora glanced up.
Four of the newer hires stood at the front, framed by the harsh spill of the cleaning lights. They were already in motion—tapping brushes against seats, shaking out bin bags, talking over one another with an enthusiasm that felt wildly disproportionate to the task at hand.
There had been a wave of recruitment recently, gearing up for the string of back-to-back blockbusters due over the next few weeks. Dora hadn’t minded the disruption to the rota. Most of them kept to themselves, settling quickly into small, self-contained groups.
Except this one.
This one had decided, for reasons she could not begin to understand, that she was worth the effort. They kept trying to draw her in. Chatting. Joking. Inviting. Pushing gently but persistently against the very obvious signals that she wanted to be left alone.
And one of them, in particular, did not seem inclined to give up.
“Hey, Dora.” The voice landed closer than she expected—warm, bright, and just a shade too familiar.
She glanced up. One of the new starters, Levi, had somehow crossed the row without her noticing.
“Hi, Levi,” she said, polite but distant, already turning back to the mess in front of her.
Levi flicked open a bin bag with a sharp snap, the plastic crackling in the quiet. Then he crouched beside her, angling himself into the narrow space with an easy lack of ceremony—close enough that his shoulder nearly brushed hers.
Too close.
Dora shifted slightly, the movement instinctive rather than deliberate, but he didn’t seem to register it.
Levi reached past her, plucking the soggy nacho tray from where she’d been working and dropping it neatly into the bag. When he straightened, he pushed a hand back through his bronze hair, the movement easy, practised—almost charming, if not for the sense that it was meant to be. A strand slipped straight back into his eyes. He huffed a quiet breath at it, faintly amused, but didn’t bother fixing it again.
“So…” he began.
Dora felt the sigh rise and swallowed it down.
“…we all finish at six,” he continued, nodding vaguely toward the others, “and we were thinking of heading to the pub after.” A pause—just enough to make it feel deliberate. “You finish at six too.”
He said it like it was good news.
“I don’t want to go to the pub,” Dora replied, not looking at him.
A soft laugh drifted up from the front rows.
Emma.
She was leaning casually against the back of a seat, one foot hooked behind the other, sweep slung over her shoulder like an accessory rather than something functional. Her pale blonde hair caught what little light there was, and somehow—even in a near-empty screen, in a uniform that didn’t suit anyone—she still looked effortlessly put together.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Emma said, grinning. “Everyone wants to go to the pub.”
Dora didn’t miss the way Gabriel laughed immediately—too quick, too loud. He hovered nearby, brushing the same patch of carpet for the third time, his attention fixed far more on Emma than the job.
“Well, I don’t,” Dora muttered, gathering the stained blue roll as she pushed herself to her feet.
Levi shifted with her as she rose—again, just a fraction too close, as though the space between them were something to be closed rather than kept.
“It’ll be fun,” he said lightly. “I promise.”
“I’m not in the mood,” she replied, moving on with her sweep to the next row.
For a moment, she thought that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t.
“No one has ever regretted going to the pub,” Levi said confidently.
A head popped up from between two rows.
“Er—no, I absolutely have,” Charlie said, his voice cutting cleanly across the space. His accent was precise to the point of distraction, each word placed with deliberate care. “Several times, in fact.”
Emma laughed. Gabriel laughed harder.
Levi did too—softer, as though he were willing to concede the point, just not the outcome.
Dora tried to focus on sweeping, but Levi’s voice followed her, a thread through the quiet air, catching and tugging at her attention.
“Come on,” he said, leaning over the row of chairs between them. “We all need to blow off some steam. Charlie definitely does—if I have to hear about his economics essay one more time—”
“I only got sixty-five percent,” Charlie cut in, voice tight with agitation. “If I don’t get a first—”
“Yeah, we know,” Gabriel interrupted, sharp and mocking. He traded a quick, knowing smirk with Emma. “Daddy’s going to be mad.”
They were in the final row now. Almost done. Dora glanced at her cracked watch. Half past four. A flash of blonde hair caught the corner of her vision.
“Please don’t leave me with the boys,” Emma said, playfully pouting. “Please. You never come out with us.”
“Even if I wanted to—” she began.
Levi tilted his head, eyes sharp, searching. “Even if you wanted to what?”
Dora felt herself flinch under his gaze. There was nothing aggressive in it, just… attentive in a way that lingered a fraction too long. It felt like standing under a spotlight when all she wanted was somewhere dim and forgettable to disappear into. The instinct to withdraw tugged at her—quiet, familiar—but she stayed where she was.
“I just have a lot going on right now,” she admitted, reluctantly, already bracing for the questions she might invite.
Levi’s grin softened, easy and confident, like someone who had rehearsed this dance a thousand times. His eyes flicked to the others, as if consulting a silent jury. “I get it,” he said lightly. “Life’s complicated. Busy. Deadlines, family drama, existential crises… all of it.”
Dora hesitated, broom paused mid-sweep. His words landed too close, brushing against something raw she had been trying not to touch.
“But,” Levi continued, the blue of his eyes catching the overhead light, “there’s a simple solution.” He raised his hands like a magician revealing his grand trick. “The pub. Where all the most tortured souls go for release. If you can’t find your answers at the bottom of a glass… you just try again.”
“After the fourth or fifth, you stop worrying about the answer at all, I find,” Emma added.
Levi’s tone dipped, smoother now, persuasion threaded through it. “One hour. Just one hour. No questions. No pressure. Just a drink, some laughter, a chance to breathe. That’s all.”
Gabriel leaned against the stair rail, eager. “We’re actually really good company. You might even end up staying longer than you planned.”
Levi leaned a fraction closer. The faint scent of his soap drifted with him—something herbal, softened by a darker note beneath it, warm and unfamiliar, like incense left too long to burn.
“And, honestly…” His voice softened, a teasing lilt creeping in. “If you do hate it, you’re free to leave. No one will say a thing. No one will judge. Except maybe me, a tiny bit, but I’ll survive.”
Somehow, that had been enough.
Dora had never handled subtle social pressure well, and the gentle insistence of all four of them—vying for her attention, leaning into her orbit—pressed against something already worn thin. The loneliness that had been sitting, quiet and heavy, in her chest for weeks shifted, just enough to make space for it.
The next thing she knew, six o’clock rolled around, and she was being half-led, half-dragged toward the pub down the road—the sort favoured by students and the directionless alike: a long bar spanning the room, cheap drinks, and toilets that required a map and a sense of adventure to locate. The air carried the faint, stubborn scent of spilled beer, frying oil, and old wood.
They claimed a corner booth near the back, where the light barely reached and conversations curled around them in soft, insulating loops. Emma flopped into the bench across from Dora, settling easily against the wall, hair slipping over one shoulder. Gabriel slid in beside her, restless, energy coiled tight beneath the surface. Levi took the space at Dora’s side, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, but not quite crossing the line. Charlie borrowed a chair from a nearby table and perched at the end, posture precise, gaze moving as though cataloguing the room.
The first round of drinks arrived, glasses clinking against the scratched tabletop. A pint was set down in front of her.
Dora blinked. She hadn’t even ordered yet.
Levi’s eyes found hers. “First round’s on me,” he said, shrugging as if it were nothing—though the gesture settled strangely, a quiet weight in her chest.
Gabriel launched into a story about a disastrous shift at work, voice loud, hands moving in broad, emphatic sweeps. Charlie scoffed, cutting in to correct minor details, his words clipped and precise. Emma leaned back, letting the conversation wash over her, easy and untouchable.
And Dora, who had spent the last weeks drifting through her days in quiet isolation, found herself drawn into it—anchored by the noise, the movement, the simple presence of other people.
Levi’s presence at her side was a steady current, soft but persistent. When she laughed at something Emma said, he caught it, echoing her smile just enough to make her feel seen. When she fell quiet, staring into her pint, he didn’t press; he shifted a fraction closer instead, the movement subtle, unremarked.
It should have been easy to ignore.
It wasn’t.
That small tether—the warmth of someone paying attention, uncomplicated and easy—was difficult to resist.
By the time the hour had stretched, Dora found herself laughing at a joke she didn’t entirely follow, sipping at a second drink that was stronger than she’d expected, leaning just a fraction closer to Levi without quite realising it. Some part of her still held itself tight, waiting for the moment something shifted wrong—but she didn’t leave.
She didn’t want to.
“You’re smiling,” Levi said softly, low enough that only she could hear it through the surrounding chatter. “I think you’re enjoying this.”
Dora tipped her head at his smugness, annoyed and yet faintly amused. “Okay, maybe you were right. This might have been exactly what I needed. I’ve just been—” She faltered, the words slipping loose before they could take shape. “It’s just been hard lately.”
The bench creaked as Levi shifted, subtle and careful. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Dora let out a short, uneven laugh. “Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Try,” Levi suggested gently. “See how it feels.”
She sipped her drink again. “I’m just… having some problems with my father,” she said, the words slipping free before she could stop them, softened by the warmth of the pub and the faint blur of the alcohol.
The moment they were out, they felt wrong. Too bare. Too close to something she didn’t want to touch. The taste of it lingered, sharp and unpleasant, and she moved quickly to cover it.
“I just— you know. It is what it is. It’s fine. I’m just… figuring things out.” She gave a small, dismissive shrug. “Nothing much to tell.”
Charlie laughed, a bright, ringing sound that carried a little too far. “I know all about that. Don’t worry—I completely understand where you’re coming from.”
“You’re in good company for daddy issues,” Emma added, shooting him a pointed look.
“I don’t have daddy issues,” Charlie protested, and the group laughed.
One hour stretched into two, then three. Dora eventually lost track of time entirely. Her head felt warm, the edges of the pub soft and slightly unsteady.
Her gaze snagged on a pub dog sprawled beneath a nearby table, and for a moment she had the vague, compelling sense that that could be her. She could get a dog. That would solve everything.
She’d always wanted one, but her mother had worked too much. And her grandmother would have said no on principle.
The thought drifted off before it could settle.
Faintly, as though it were happening a few tables over, she registered movement—the shifting of people, the scrape of chairs.
“Ready to call it?” Levi asked, suddenly in her direct line of sight. The shift snapped her focus back. Her vision tightened on the group gathering their belongings. “Grab your stuff. I’ll walk you home.”
Dora blinked at him, frowning slightly as she tugged at the neck of her jumper. Too hot all of a sudden. “I’m fine,” she said, a little too quickly. “Really.”
“Come on,” Levi said, stepping closer. “I insist. It’s late. You shouldn’t be wandering alone.” His eyes caught hers, soft, persuasive.
For a moment, there was an urge to say yes.
But a more cautious voice took the wheel instead. “I said I’m fine,” she repeated, firmer now, leaning back against the booth. The alcohol gave her just enough edge to hold his gaze as she added, “No offence, but I’m not letting a man I barely know walk me home.”
Levi’s lips quirked into a small, amused smile, but he didn’t push it. “Fair. Probably smart. Can you at least text us when you get home?” His attention dipped to his phone as he tapped. “There. Added you to the group.”
Dora swallowed, momentarily snagged on the question of how he had her number. Then she remembered the cinema group chat—shift swaps, memes, general noise—and exhaled.
The others were already filing toward the door, chattering, bumping into one another. Levi fell into step beside her for a heartbeat, but when she slowed, he only tipped his head and dropped back, letting her lead the way out into the crisp night.
Cool spring air brushed her cheeks as she stepped onto the pavement, the pub’s warmth already slipping away. She drew in a steady breath, letting it settle her before setting off toward home.
“Get home safe, okay!” Emma called after her.
“Text us when you’re back,” Charlie added.
A faint edge of disappointment pricked her—gone almost as quickly as it came. Levi hadn’t said a word.
At first the city still hummed around her—cars threading through intersections, the glow of kebab shops and corner stores spilling onto the pavement. But block by block the noise thinned. Shutters rolled down. Windows darkened. Even the traffic faded until only the occasional black cab rattled past, headlights carving pale tunnels through the damp air.
Her footsteps echoed softly on the wet street.
She shoved her hands into her pockets, shoulders curling inward as the chill seeped through her thin jacket. The last bus for her own route had long since gone; walking was the only option now. Forty minutes, maybe more.
Darkened shop windows stared back as she passed, catching her reflection and throwing it ahead of her in warped fragments. A black cat darted across the road, pausing halfway to arch its back, hissing at something invisible—or perhaps nothing at all.
Dora quickened her pace, her pulse ticking a little faster.
Once or twice, movement at the edge of her vision made her flinch. Shadows shifting too smoothly. Curtains stirring in high windows. Just the city settling, she told herself.
Still, something in the quiet felt wrong.
By the time she reached her building, the street had fallen completely silent. The main door loomed out of the dark, its glass pane reflecting her faintly as she approached. Dora dug her keys from her bag, fingers fumbling slightly, and worked the lock—once, twice—before it caught. She slipped inside. The door closed behind her with a hollow thud.
The stairwell was dim, stale, lit by a single yellow bulb that hummed faintly overhead. Her footsteps rang out against the concrete stairs, bouncing off the narrow walls in quick, uneven bursts.
Halfway up the first flight, she paused.
Something smelled wrong—acrid, almost electric, like overheated wiring. It caught at the back of her throat, sharp and faintly bitter.
She tilted her head, trying to place it. Burnt toast, maybe. Or a candle snuffed too quickly. Neither quite fit, but the scent was faint, already thinning. She moved on, slower now, shoulders tight, each step more deliberate.
The second floor—her floor—was silent. Every door closed. The strip light above flickered faintly, as it had for weeks despite multiple complaints to the landlord. Her flat waited at the end of the corridor, the same as always—but tonight the door seemed smaller somehow, swallowed halfway by shadow.
Her fingers, clammy, fumbled with the key. It stuck for a heartbeat before turning with a soft, reluctant click. She slipped inside and closed the door quietly behind her.
The smell was stronger here. Sharper. Clinging to the edges of the room like smoke caught in fabric.
Slowly, she made her way down the hall, the scent thickening with each step. She stopped at her bedroom door, peering at it cautiously, as though she might be able to see through it if she tried hard enough.
Her pulse kicked, and she forced herself to reason through it—maybe her hairdryer had melted through her duvet, or her fraying charger had finally decided to betray her.
But none of it settled the thrum beneath her skin.
Maybe I should call Loki.
It wasn’t even a thought. More a reflex—a pull, sharp and immediate, that had her reaching before she’d quite decided to. She could do it. Send a thread of magic, thin and fragile, stretching across the distance until he felt it—if she pushed hard enough.
Her fingers twitched.
She could picture it too easily—the stretch of silence that would follow. The waiting. That awful, suspended pause where nothing came back.
Maybe he wouldn’t feel it.
Maybe he would.
Maybe he would—and nothing would come of it.
Her hand stilled.
The thought pressed further before she could stop it—herself standing there, still as she was now, listening for something that wasn’t coming. Trying not to count the seconds. Trying not to let the quiet mean anything.
Trying not to realise that it did.
No.
Her fingers curled in on themselves, nails biting into her palm.
She wasn’t doing that.
Loki had made his choice. He had disappeared. Just… stepped back from her life as though it meant nothing. He had made that decision without discussion, without fair warning, without explanation. So let him deal with the consequences.
If he wanted to know what was happening in her life, he could try actually being part of it.
The thought came hard, something to hold onto, something solid. She gripped it, let it settle, let it harden. Her throat tightened. The heat that rushed in was easier to cope with—anger, sharp and clean, cutting through everything softer beneath it.
If something was wrong tonight, she would face it alone. She wasn’t a child. She wouldn’t chase after someone who had already made it clear they didn’t want to be found.
And she certainly wasn’t going to beg him to come back.
Not even now.
With a steadying breath, she pushed through the door, a stubborn streak at her core carrying her past the anxious thoughts clawing at her mind.
The room beyond was empty.
Just her bed. Her desk. The familiar dim shape of the wardrobe. Nothing wrong. Not a single item out of place. She let out a slow, trembling breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.
Only then did the exhaustion hit—heavy and immediate, dragging at her limbs. Shoes were kicked off, jacket tossed aside, and she crossed the room. As she reached for the duvet, her fingers brushed the fabric—
A sharp, snapping sting skittered across her skin.
Dora flinched, jerking her hand back. “—Ow.”
She rubbed her fingers against her sleeve, frowning faintly before dismissing it. Static. Must be.
She sank onto the bed. The strange tang in the air still lingered—fainter now, or perhaps she was simply getting used to it—but exhaustion, and the warmth still clinging from the fifth drink, dulled its edge. She curled beneath the covers and closed her eyes, willing sleep to come.
It arrived in fragments. Shallow, fitful, yet vivid, as though her tension had bled into her dreams.
A forest she didn’t recognise.
The trees hunched close together, gnarled and knotted, their branches clawing upward as though trying to tear open the sky. The air pressed in around her—thick, watchful. Something moved just beyond her sightline, shadows slipping between trunks, never quite resolving, always there.
She was running.
The ground shifted beneath her feet, not quite solid—softening, buckling, as though it resented her weight. Each step dragged, resisted, the earth giving just enough to unsteady her without letting her fall.
Ahead, a light.
Faint. Flickering between the trees.
She fixed on it, lungs burning, and pushed harder.
It didn’t get closer.
The distance stretched, elastic, pulling away from her with every step. The light held where it was—always just out of reach.
Behind her—
something there.
Not sound. Not quite. A pressure that followed without needing to chase.
Then—
a voice.
Low. Resonant. Too close.
“Run all you wish…”
The words slipped through her, not heard so much as felt, curling cold through her chest.
“But you cannot escape this.”
The forest tightened. The trees bent inward, trunks shifting with a slow, deliberate inevitability, hemming her in. The air thickened, heat pressing against her skin, metallic and bitter at the back of her throat.
She glanced back—
—and saw it forming.
Not bars. Not yet. But the shape of them. Lines of darkness drawing themselves through the air, liquid shadow stretching and settling into place. A cage in the act of becoming.
Waiting for her to stop.
She didn’t.
She ran harder.
The ground shifted beneath her, softening without warning. Her foot sank—just enough to catch.
She wrenched free.
Another step—
—and the earth gave way completely.
It swallowed her to the ankle, cold and yielding, then tightened. Roots twisted around her, sudden and precise, locking her in place.
“No—”
She lurched forward, dragging against it. The vines answered, lashing upward, coiling tight around her calves, her thighs, pulling her down as much as holding her still.
The voice laughed.
Soft. Patient.
Certain.
Ahead, the light flickered.
Closer now.
Close enough to touch.
She reached for it—
Fingers outstretched, straining—
The ground surged.
The earth split beneath her, giving way in a single, violent pull. The vines yanked tight, dragging her down as the soil closed over her legs, her hips—
her chest—
her mouth filling with the taste of dirt and something bitter, metallic—
The light snapped out.
Darkness crushed in.
The forest vanished.
And she fell.
Dora jolted awake, catapulting upright in bed, heart hammering. The sheets had twisted around her legs like the vines that had dragged her down in the dream. Frantically, she kicked herself free, breaths coming fast as panic rattled through her chest.
Something flickered at the edge of her mind—faint, familiar.
Loki.
The thread between them stirred, a deliberate, insistent pull that tightened low in her chest. No longer distant. No longer missing. Close. Concern followed, threading through the contact—his, quiet but unmistakable—and the breath left her in a rush she hadn’t meant to give.
Relief hit first—sharp and disorienting, almost painful in its intensity. It cracked through her before she could stop it, loosening something that had been wound too tight for too long, and for a moment—just a moment—she let herself feel it. He was there. He hadn’t disappeared completely. He hadn’t—
The thought faltered under its own weight.
Because he had.
Three weeks of silence did not vanish just because he reached for her now. She had no idea what this was—a moment, a flicker of guilt, something that would disappear again as easily as it had come. Whether he stayed or went didn’t matter. It erased nothing.
He couldn’t just reach for her as though the silence between them had been nothing at all. As though she hadn’t spent weeks learning how to hold herself together without him. As though she were still waiting exactly where he had left her.
Her stomach twisted, the relief turning sharp at the edges.
No.
Her grip tightened on the sheets, grounding herself in something solid as something harder rose up to meet that brief, traitorous flicker of want. She pushed back—not gently, not carefully, but with a force that surprised even her, the connection snapping under it as she drove him out, the mental equivalent of a shove.
He didn’t get to come crawling back like that—not after disappearing, leaving nothing but that stupid dust note behind.
The echo of him faltered, fading quickly, and the silence that followed closed in around her—not the same hollow absence as before, but something chosen, held in place by sheer will.
Her chest ached with it anyway.
She pressed her lips together, jaw tight, forcing the feeling down before it could take shape. Whatever part of her had reached back without thinking, she buried it hard, sealing it off before it could turn into something worse.
Something that might call him back.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Dora tried to shake the remnants of the dream. The flat was quiet, save for the hum of the fridge in the next room and the occasional groan of settling pipes—ordinary sounds, yet each one seemed unnervingly sharp, echoing through the stillness.
Then—
something shifted in the quiet.
A sound, soft and fleeting. Not quite a whisper. Not quite a breath. It slipped through the room too thin to catch, snagging at the edge of her hearing before she could fix on it.
For a second, it almost sounded like a laugh.
Dora froze, every nerve drawn tight. Her chest tightened, her skin prickling as though the air itself had shifted, pressing in around her. The silence that followed felt viscous, heavy, resisting even her tentative breaths.
Without warning, a pulse surged outward. Not sound, not quite, but pressure, swelling in her ears, sliding along her nerves, raising the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. It brushed past her—through her—like a current slipping free of its bounds.
And then it was gone.
The room settled. The fridge hummed, indifferent. On the surface, everything was exactly as it should be, but the faint tang in the air lingered—sharp and electric, a faint echo of what had just passed.
Dora swallowed and leaned back against the headboard, forcing her fingers to unclench. Just the dream, she told herself. Or the booze.
I’m tired. I’m imagining things.
She scrubbed at her eyes, stacking the thoughts like charms.
Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine. I’m fine.
Even as she tried to believe it, a taut, watchful corner of her mind refused to yield.
She curled beneath the covers, dragging them over her head as she had done as a child. Her heart still skittered. Sleep, she whispered to herself. Tomorrow it’ll make sense. Just forget it. But the unease lingered, an itch beneath the skin, a quiet insistence that something—someone—had been here.
With a sharp breath, she pushed the covers aside and yanked open the bedside drawer. Her fingers closed around the familiar weight of the kitchen knife hidden within. She slid toward the doorframe, seating herself cross-legged. One hand traced the faint grooves in the wood, nearly invisible in the dim light. The other held the knife at eye level, tip pressing gently into the pine. Her breath steadied. Her mind narrowed, focused, every sense alert.
Just in case.