Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 44

And storms always find a way back.

I rolled onto my side, eyes open, tracing the pattern of the cracks in my ceiling. They looked like roads leading nowhere. Like threads coming undone. I thought about James. His tired voice. The way he’d whisper prayers he didn’t think I heard. I thought about the fire. The moth. The roots. What does it mean when you dream of being buried and set alight in the same breath? What does it mean when the one you trust most goes quiet, just long enough for your mind to start creating its own monsters?

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just a dream. But dreams are built from pieces of us that we bury. And sometimes… they come back to warn us.

When I came downstairs, the house felt colder than usual. Dad had already left for work. His keys weren’t on the hook, and the radio was off, no mellow morning jazz, no humming under his breath while frying something over the stove. Just the stillness of a home going through the motions. On the kitchen table, a plate sat waiting, leftover hotdogs and eggs beside a small mound of rice. He’d even set the fork neatly beside it, a quiet, fatherly kind of love. I sat down and ate in silence, chewing just enough to swallow. The egg was rubbery, the hotdogs too sweet, the rice sticking to the roof of my mouth. I chased it all down with too-hot coffee, letting the bitterness scald away what was left of the strange dream that still clung to me.

The dream, the burning field, the moth-boy, the roots that pulled me under. I could still feel the earth in my throat, taste it, like something was trying to bury me even after I’d woken up. It was the kind of dream that doesn’t fade... it stains.

I reached for my phone.No messages. No calls. No little blue dot. No “good morning, B.” Just a black screen and my reflection looking back. I checked my last text to James. “You okay?” It was still there, unsent. I hit send. Watched it deliver. Waited.

Still nothing.

My fingers curled tight around the phone. I hated this feeling. This quiet unraveling. This not-knowing. I told myself it was fine. Maybe he was still at practice. Maybe he overslept. Maybe his phone died.

Maybe.
Always maybe.

The butterfly bracelet on my wrist pressed into my skin, not the one that had slipped off into the sand during the beach trip. That one was gone. This one... this was the replica James gave me on my birthday. A mirror of the one my mother left me. His way of saying, “You don’t have to lose everything.”

But now it felt heavier. Like maybe I already had.

Outside, a tricycle sputtered down the street. My uniform felt too tight, the air too thick. I rinsed my plate, wiped my mouth, and shoved the coffee mug into the sink. Dad had left me breakfast. James had left me... nothing. And somehow, that difference felt bigger than it should. At school, there was still no sign of James.

No tousled curls by the hallway lockers. No half-lazy grin across the quad. No warm, off-beat footsteps that always found rhythm beside mine. Just… silence. I asked Inez between classes. She shook her head.

“Haven’t seen him,” she said, biting her lip like she was holding something back.
Corey, cheerful as always, gave a half-shrug. “Maybe he overslept? Retreat must’ve wiped him out.”

Tim was more careful, eyes flickering. “He’s probably tired, B. That trip was packed. You know him, he disappears sometimes.”

Even Drake looked blank. “Nah, he’s usually online. I haven’t seen him either, not since the ride back.”

It didn’t feel like a coincidence.
It felt… deliberate.

By the time lunch came, my tray was barely touched. The rice turned cold, the fried chicken's skin turned soggy, and the iced tea watered itself down. My eyes kept scanning the crowd, back and forth, over the sea of heads in the cafeteria, waiting for him to walk in, to slouch into a chair with his headphones around his neck and his stupidly charming smirk. To look for me like he always did. But he never came. Not even a shadow.