The room was identical.
Ji-Hyuk stood in the center of a replicated apartment — same peeling wallpaper, same crooked lamp in the corner, same photograph half-taped to the fridge.
Sora Ji-Hyun's last known home.
But the walls weren't walls.
They were memory.
The Fold had woven them like silk from Ji-Hyuk's mind. Every detail was perfect. And that was the danger.
Maeryn floated behind him, unstable in the Fold's mimicspace. Even her outline glitched around the corners, as if the room was trying to reject her.
"You shouldn't be here," she said, low.
"Neither should she," Ji-Hyuk replied.
They walked into the living room.
And there she was.
Sora sat on the couch, barefoot, wrapped in the same gray sweater she used to wear when the winters bit too hard. A mug of tea steamed in her hands.
She looked up.
And smiled.
Not wrong.
Not twisted.
Perfect.
"Welcome home," she said softly.
Ji-Hyuk didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
Maeryn stood behind him like a shadow of war.
But the warmth in the room…
It burned.
Not like heat.
Like grief.
"I missed you," Sora said, voice so real it bled.
Ji-Hyuk's jaw clenched. "You're not her."
"I know," she said.
That made him pause.
"You're… aware?"
"I'm not just her. I'm also the part of you that remembers her. I'm what's left behind."
Maeryn's eyes narrowed. "That's not how Fold echoes speak."
Sora turned to her.
"I'm not the Fold," she said. "Not anymore. I… broke off. I think. I remembered too clearly."
She looked back at Ji-Hyuk.
"You remembered me so fiercely that the Fold couldn't overwrite it. So instead, it built this. And I stayed."
He approached slowly.
The couch didn't creak under her weight.
The tea didn't cool.
Ji-Hyuk looked her in the eyes.
"Are you in control?"
"No," she said honestly. "But I'm resisting. Just like you do."
He stared at her hands — the same tiny scar on her knuckle from slicing apples wrong. The chipped nail on her thumb. The callous from too much writing.
His memories.
His grief.
"I want to believe," he said.
"You don't need to."
She reached out.
Touched his cheek.
Warm.
Real.
"You already do."
Maeryn flinched.
A pulse rippled through the room.
The walls… breathed.
Fold presence reasserting.
A voice began whispering from behind the light fixtures.
"Enough sentiment. End the fracture."
The memory had lasted too long.
The Fold wanted it back.
But Sora stood up.
And turned to it.
"No," she said, voice sharp. "You used me. You used him. But you forgot one thing."
She looked at Ji-Hyuk.
Then back at the room.
"You forgot why he survives."
The light turned red.
Spirals bloomed across the ceiling.
The walls cracked, but not like plaster — like thought tearing.
The floor beneath them warped, trying to dissolve the memory.
But Ji-Hyuk moved first.
He summoned the glyph.
The same one he carved the day he buried her.
A seal of closure.
A symbol of farewell.
He pressed it into the air.
And Sora looked at him one last time.
"Thank you," she said.
Then she smiled — not like a ghost.
Like a woman ready to rest.
And willingly faded.
The Fold screamed.
The entire construct twisted, collapsing in on itself.
Ji-Hyuk grabbed Maeryn and pulled her out just before the breach shut.
They fell back into the real world.
Ji-Hyuk gasped for breath.
Maeryn steadied him.
"She was real," he said, voice raw.
"I know."
"But not alive."
"I know."
He looked up at the moon.
"Then why does it still hurt?"
Maeryn didn't answer.
Because some grief never stops bleeding.
Even when the ghost finally says goodbye.
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