The rain turned the world into glass.
It soaked Sarah's skin, soaked Ace's shirt, ran in rivulets down Sarai's face without making her blink. The figures behind her, those fractured memories, blurred in the downpour—but they did not fade. Not this time.
Sarai tilted her head as if studying Sarah, truly studying her for the first time.
"Do you remember the last time it rained like this?" she asked, lips curving.
Sarah didn't answer. She didn't have to.
Sarai already knew the answer.
Because it had rained the night she first tried to leave Hal.
The night she failed.
The night she crawled back inside, soaked and shaking, telling herself next time, next time until the words lost meaning.
"I held you that night," Sarai continued. "When no one else did. I whispered that it was okay. That survival mattered more than hope."
Her voice wrapped around them like smoke.
Ace tensed beside Sarah, but she touched his hand, a silent request: Let me do this.
She stepped closer to Sarai, close enough to see the red veins bleeding through the whites of her shadow's eyes.
"You didn't hold me," Sarah said. "You held my fear."
Sarai's smile faltered, just a breath.
"I was your strength," she whispered.
"You were my armor," Sarah corrected. "But armor becomes a prison when you never take it off."
Sarai's mouth opened, but no sound came out.
"You made me survive, but I don't want to just survive anymore."
Sarah turned, slowly, deliberately, toward the line of memory-ghosts standing in the rain.
The girl with the split lip.
The girl with the torn heart.
The girl who never told anyone the truth.
She met each gaze, one by one.
"I see you," she said. "And I forgive you."
A gust of wind surged through the field, wild and sharp.
One of the shadows flickered.
Another fell to its knees.
Sarah stepped toward them—not afraid, not trembling.
"I let you go."
The girl with the bruised arms vanished like steam.
"I forgive the silence."
The girl with the bloody journal blinked—and dissolved.
Each shadow disappeared as Sarah named them.
Not as ghosts.
But as pieces.
And when she looked back at Sarai…
The rain hit the ground harder now, almost drowning the silence between them.
But something had changed.
Sarai's form shimmered—less solid, less certain.
"No," Sarai hissed. "You need me. You are me—"
Sarah stepped close enough to touch her. She didn't.
"I'll always have you," she said. "But I choose when you speak."
Ace was behind her now, silent, steady. A wall of warmth.
"You don't get to be louder than my healing anymore."
Sarai's form broke.
Not all at once.
It started with her hands—turning to smoke, her fingernails scattering like ash. Then her shoulders, her hair, her twisted, beautiful, familiar face.
And as the wind howled through the trees, Sarai whispered:
"You were never strong without me."
Sarah whispered back, steady and sure:
"I am stronger because I let you go."
Sarai screamed.
A sound without voice. Without echo.
She shattered into nothing.
The rain stopped.
Ace was already beside her, holding her without needing to ask if she was okay.
Because she wasn't.
Not completely.
Not yet.
But she would be.
Sarah leaned into him, soaked to the bone, heart pounding hard but whole.
"She's gone," she said, eyes closed.
"No," Ace murmured. "She's part of you. But now you're the one in control."
Sarah looked up at the sky.
The clouds were breaking. Sunlight sliced through in golden shafts.
Behind them, the house waited.
The cracked mirror.
The unopened doors.
The quiet.
She took Ace's hand.
"Let's go home."