Chapter 4 One Night That Shouldn't Exist

AMELIE POV

We walk through empty streets while the world holds its breath.

Ashmir sleeps beneath the fading auroras—soft ribbons of color dissolving into the night, unaware that impossibility walks beside me. Dexter moves like someone learning to live inside a body he isn't convinced is his. Slow, curious steps, testing weight, marveling at the sensation of cobblestones beneath bare feet.

I should be afraid.

Nothing about tonight makes sense.

Nothing about him should be real.

Echoes don’t walk.

They don’t breathe.

They don’t become flesh.

And yet he’s here—solid, breathing, impossibly warm when the back of his hand brushes mine.

I don’t know what to do with that.

“You were seven,” he says suddenly. His voice feels like silk drawn across a wound—familiar and soothing and unbearably intimate. “When you first tasted honey in your tea. Your mother made it for you after a nightmare. You’ve taken it that way every morning since.”

I stop walking.

The street is silent around us except for the faint hum of aurora residue fading into the atmosphere. My breath fogs in the cool air. His doesn’t.

“How do you know that?” I whisper.

He stops a few steps ahead and turns. Moonlight sinks into the storm-gray of his eyes, illuminating something old, heavy, and heartbreakingly soft.

“Because I tasted it too,” he says. “Every morning. Every cup. Honey and regret.”

The words hit like a blow.

Regret.

He tasted that too?

My voice cracks. “Why regret?”

“Because you drink it thinking about every place you’ve never been. About all the maps you draw but never dare to follow.” His tone is gentle but unyielding. “I felt it every time. I’ve felt everything, Amelie. All your mornings. All your loneliness.”

My throat tightens, the years of isolation curling like fists inside my chest.

“The nightmare,” I breathe. “The one that started it. I dreamed I was drowning in shadows. I told my mother I couldn’t breathe.”

“I know,” he murmurs. “I was there. Trying to pull you out. But I had no hands. No voice. I could only watch you struggle.”

His fists clench at his sides.

Grief flickers across his features like lightning.

“Dexter…” I whisper.

He shakes his head. “I lived inside your shadow for twenty-four years. Half-awake. Half-alive. Feeling everything you felt. Every joy. Every pain. Every night you sat alone in your study wishing someone understood you—I understood you. Gods, I wanted to speak to you. To reach you. But Echoes don’t get to choose.”

The confession hits so deep I almost stagger.

We reach my cottage—a small, ivy-laced structure tucked behind rows of sleeping houses. The auroras paint its windows in pale colors.

I hesitate at the door.

“What do you want, Dexter?” The question rips out of me before I can soften it. “From this night. From being real. What do you actually want?”

He steps toward me, slow, deliberate, unsure. His hands tremble. Not with fear—but with longing.

“To touch something real,” he answers. “Just once. Before dawn erases me.”

The honesty in that single sentence breaks something in me I didn’t know was fragile.

I open the door.

Inside, the scent of ink and lavender wraps around us. The fire is cold but waiting to be lit. My maps cover the walls—impossible cities, dream places, impossible futures.

Dexter walks among them like a pilgrim entering a temple he’s prayed to from afar.

He stops before my drawing of Velaskren.

“Velaskren,” he murmurs. “The city that folds its own streets.”

“You’ve seen it?” I ask.

“I’ve seen every version of it. Every future where you finish the map. Every future where you abandon it.” His fingers hover above the parchment. “You don’t just draw cities, Amelie. You draw probability. Destiny. Your bloodline—Cartographers of Fate—you shape what could be.”

My breath catches. “My mother never—”

“Told you? No. She was trying to save you.” His voice softens. “She watched your grandmother and aunt burn out from the inside. Saw the gift devour them. She hid what you were so you wouldn’t die the same way.”

Silence settles between us—thick and heavy.

“How much time do we have?” I finally ask.

His eyes lift to the window. The moons have shifted further apart—the convergence fading.

“Less than an hour,” he replies.

The words steal a piece of my breath.

Then:

“Don’t waste it on silence,” he says gently.

And so he tells me.

About Echoes.

About the Unwritten Realms.

About the place he existed before tonight—half-alive, half-dreaming.

I listen, memorizing him—his voice, his gestures, the way he looks at me like he’s searching for something he’s already found.

When the first pale edge of dawn touches the horizon, his form flickers.

“It’s starting,” he whispers.

“No.”

I cross to him, heart pounding. “You said you wanted to touch something real. Then—then touch me.”

His breath catches. The flicker steadies.

“Amelie…”

He reaches—not for my hand, but for my shadow.

The moment his fingers touch the darkness at my feet, the world shudders.

Time stutters.

Flames recoil.

Candlelight reverses.

Reality bends inward.

Our shadows merge.

I feel him.

Feel his existence, his essence, blending into mine.

Dexter gasps and becomes more real—more solid—than ever. For a heartbeat, dawn can’t take him. For a heartbeat, he belongs to the world.

And reality breaks.

“It’s a line we can’t uncross,” I whisper.

“I know.” His voice trembles. “Amelie… I—”

But dawn cuts through the window like a blade.

Where it touches him, he dissolves.

“I’ll come back,” he promises as his voice fractures into light. “Even if I have to rebuild myself from pieces. Even if I have to steal moments from a thousand strangers’ shadows—I’ll find you.”

Then he’s gone.

The light collapses into my shadow.

And I’m alone.