Darkness did not swallow her.

It folded her.

Like silk collapsing into a seam, like breath being drawn into a mouth that wasn’t hers, Elaria felt the edges of herself close—not dissolving, not ending—but narrowing into a single finely drawn point. A thread pulled taut.

A name stretched thin.

A soul made into a needle.

She did not know how long she had been falling in this shape.

Not falling.

Passing.

Through layers of memory that were not memories. Through lives she had never lived ...