The air inside the cottage had changed. It was the same place, the same coffee mugs, the same battered shoes by the door—but it wasn't home anymore. Not without Ambrose.
There was a silence that pressed against our ribs. Not the silence of sleep or stillness. The silence of something missing. Like the world was holding its breath, waiting for us to notice just how wrong everything was.
Jacob had taken Ambrose's old hoodie and pulled the hood up, like he wanted to disappear inside it. Bobby sat by the table, staring at a compass that wouldn't stop spinning. I just stood by the window, watching the forest.
The shimmer was gone.
No light.
No pulse.
Just trees. Still. Indifferent.
Time moved. We ate. We slept. We talked—when we could. But none of it was normal. Not really. Not anymore.
I found the chalk.
The same chalk Ambrose had used to mark our loops. I wasn't sure why I picked it up. Maybe I was hoping it still held a trace of him. Maybe I just needed to draw something, anything, to feel real again.
I walked out onto the cottage steps and looked at the wooden porch.
And I drew a stick figure.
It had a cape.
Jacob started drinking his coffee with whiskey. Bobby stopped sleeping more than two hours at a time. I started writing. Not like before. This time, the journal was just names and lines and maps I wasn't sure were even real.
Some days we didn't speak at all.
Then came the polaroid.
It was tucked inside Bobby's backpack. None of us remembered taking it.
In it, we were all standing in front of the spiral node. The light carved out our silhouettes. And in the middle—between Bobby and me—was Ambrose.
Smiling.
Holding a chalk stick.
Beneath the photo, scribbled in handwriting that wasn't any of ours:
"Hold the Fold. Tell my mom I was a superhero."
Bobby dropped it. Jacob picked it up and didn't let go for hours.
I knew then—we weren't done. The Fold wasn't either.
Weeks passed. We tried to live. Called people. Spoke to Anita. To Laura. Bobby's mom.
Something was off with all of them.
Not wrong, just… misaligned.
Anita didn't remember our last trip.
Laura said she thought Jacob was in Spain.
Bobby's mom told him she'd gotten his postcard from Mumbai.
None of us had been to those places. Not yet.
That night, Bobby looked at me and said, "We're not us here. Not completely."
I didn't argue.
The Fold hadn't closed. It had gone quiet.
That's worse.
One morning, Jacob opened his journal to find a page filled in. Doodles of trees, a map of a clearing, and at the center, the spiral again. Underneath:
"Start again. The echo loops."
None of us had drawn it.
But all of us remembered it.
Sometimes I wake up and I swear I hear Ambrose humming in the other room.
Sometimes I see movement in mirrors, a half-step out of sync with me.
Sometimes Bobby's compass stops spinning—only to point toward the fireplace.
I lifted one of the stones there and found a stick figure.
It had a cape.
We didn't talk about going back.
Not yet.
But we knew.
We always knew.
There's something in the Fold that didn't leave with us.
Something watching.
Something waiting.
And when it calls—we'll go.
Even if it's the last time.
"She believed you."
Anita's words when I told her Ambrose had saved us.
I held onto that.
And the photo.
And the chalk.
And the silence.
End of Volume One.