I didn't sleep that night.
The note burned in my pocket like a whisper that refused to fade, and the stone—still, smooth, cold—sat in my palm like a weight of fate. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her handwriting. Every time the train groaned around a bend or slowed for a station, I expected something—someone—to come for me.
But nothing happened. Not yet.
It wasn't until the train neared an old tunnel, one I didn't remember from any map or announcement, that I saw the world change.
The windows went dark—not with night, but with... absence. The kind of darkness that had depth. Movement. Intent.
People around me were still talking, scrolling through their phones, flipping through books. Oblivious.
But outside, the sky cracked.
A flash—not lightning, but something older, golden-white and alive—rippled across the sky like a tear in reality. My reflection vanished from the glass, and in its place appeared a landscape I had never seen.
Mountains floated. Forests moved. And the horizon—it bled light and shadow, as if memory itself was being unspooled.
Then the stone in my hand pulsed.
My breath caught.
The glass of the window shimmered like water, and for a moment—I swear—I saw her. Ishita. Standing on the other side.
She didn't wave. She didn't speak.
She simply waited.
The hum of the train dulled. Everything slowed, like the seconds were being stretched.
And then the window cracked—not shattered, but peeled open like a veil. Wind rushed into the carriage, but no one noticed.
Only me.
A voice—hers—spoke inside my head. Not a memory. Not a dream.
"If you're brave enough to remember... then step through."
I didn't think.
I stood. Climbed onto the seat. And with one last look at the ordinary world, I stepped into the glass.
There was no fall. No crash.
Just silence. Thick, ancient silence.
And when I opened my eyes, the train was gone.
I stood in a field of silver grass under a violet sky streaked with stars that moved like fish through water. Towering trees pulsed with bioluminescent light, and in the distance, mountains floated lazily in the air.
A realm born of memory and myth.
A place not of Earth, but of something deeper.
And Ishita—somewhere—was here.
The horizon remembered.
Now it was my turn.