CasSandra

Chapter Nine: Threads Between Worlds

The dream began with silence. Not the soft kind, like snowfall or the pause between breaths. This silence was heavy and clinging. A silence that rang in her ears as if the world itself had been muted. Lesly stood once again in the Hollow House. Its halls stretched into impossible distances. Doors lined like patient teeth. Waiting.

Her hands shook. She had promised herself she wouldn't walk further, not without Cassie and Sandra. Not without a plan. But something in the air was different. A hum beneath her ribs, like a string plucked inside her chest.

Then...laughter.

High, bright, and childlike. It echoed from behind a half-open door near the end of the hallway. Her heart slammed against her ribs, and the name spilled from her lips without permission.

"Liora..."

The sound made the air shiver. She stumbled forward, fingertips brushing the wall as though to steady herself. The door pulsed faintly. A glow leaked through its cracks. It wasn't firelight. It wasn't sunlight. It was something else. Something that called to her.

Her hand lifted. Trembled. Reached. But just as she touched the wood, Sandra's voice slid into her head like a blade of cold water.

"Cassie must not know."

Lesly's eyes flew open, dragging her back to her dim bedroom. Sweat cooling on her forehead. Her chest ached with the weight of the dream. The phantom laughter still ringing in her ears. She pressed a hand over her heart, whispering to the empty air:

"I'll find you, Hope. I'll find you. Even if it kills me."

***

In the attic, Cassie held her breath. The veil had slipped again. She hadn't touched it. She swore she hadn't. But the painting no longer looked the same. The Hollow House still loomed in its eternal dusk, but the windows...the windows had changed.

Inside the upper window, a silhouette leaned close. Hand pressed to the glass. Not clear, not defined. But the shape was heartbreakingly familiar. Curves of hair, tilt of chin. Cassie's throat closed.

"Hope," she whispered, though the name tasted dangerous.

The coin Sandra had given her, cold weight in her pocket, suddenly grew warm. Almost unbearably so. She pulled it free, and the mirrored-lotus engraving shimmered faintly. The glow pulsed in sync with the faint light in the painting's windows, like two heartbeats struggling to find rhythm together.

Her pulse raced. She nearly pressed the coin to the canvas when a voice cut through the attic stillness.

"Don't!" Sandra said sharply.

Cassie spun, startled. Sandra stood in the doorway. Silver hair caught the weak lights. Eyes sharp as glass.

"Don't open it before you're ready," Sandra continued, stepping closer. Her voice was low, heavy with something Cassie couldn't name. "Once you do...there's no turning back."

***

Later that night, Sandra walked alone under the skeletal branches of SpringShore's courtyard garden. Shadows pooled at her feet, lengthening with every step.

A figure emerged from the dark. Cloaked. Faceless. Their presence made the air bend oddly, as though time itself were holding its breath.

"You're slipping," the figure said. Voice neither male nor female, but vast. "The fracture grows. Memory bends too far."

Sandra's jaw tightened. "I am keeping it contained."

"You made a promise once," the figure pressed. "To preserve the balance. And yet, here you are...entangled again with them. With her."

Sandra's nails dug into her palm. "Don't lecture me about promises." Her voice cracked with an anger she couldn't quite swallow. "I know better than anyone what memory costs."

The figure tilted its head. "Then you also know...Lesly's intrusion cannot continue unchecked."

Sandra turned away, wings half unfurling before she forced them still. "She's already inside. She's already chosen. All I can do now...is decide how much she remembers before the end."

The figure faded into the night like smoke. Sandra stayed rooted, heart hammering. Her breath ghosted in the cool air. She whispered to no one. Perhaps to Cassie, perhaps to herself:

"Don't make me choose."

***

The next morning, the three of them sat in the quiet corner of a café, steam curling from their mugs. Lesly's hands were tight around her cup. Her eyes were shadowed by the lack of sleep. She had told them fragments...about the Hollow House. About hearing the laughter. But not about the glowing door. That part stayed locked behind her teeth.

Cassie slid the coin across the table. Its mirrored-lotus gleamed faintly even in the weak daylight. "It reacted to the painting," she murmured.

Lesly frowned. "What does that mean?"

Sandra sipped her tea, expression unreadable. "It means the Hollow House is not just a dream. It is a fracture point. A place where memory, time, and fate intersect. Dangerous. Unforgiving."

Lesly leaned forward, desperate. "But it's where Hope is. I felt her."

Sandra's eyes flickered to Cassie, then back to Lesly. Cold at first, then softening with something reluctant. "Maybe. But if you walk that path, nothing of who you are will remain untouched."

For a heartbeat, no one spoke. The café hum surrounded them. Ordinary life carried on as though the world wasn't tilting on its axis.

Finally, Sandra placed her palm flat on the coin. "If we do this, we do it together. But don't mistake me, Lesly. I don't trust you. Not yet."

Her eyes glimmered like bright purple fire. "And the Hollow House doesn't forgive mistakes."

***

As they left the café, the table sat empty, save for the untouched saucer and the small coin lying at its center. The mirrored-lotus caught the dim morning light. Then, once the door swung shut behind them, the coin pulsed. Once. Twice.

The glow spread outward, invisible to human eyes but sharp as lightning to the unseen. Threads of light unfurled, weaving in patterns too vast for language. Tugging at strands that crossed both memory and time.

Somewhere in the unseen corridors between worlds, two presences stirred. One moved with deliberate precision, patient as a pendulum. The other flickered bright and unpredictable, like dice cast in the dark.

The coin pulsed again.

And the Hollow House shivered.

To be continued...