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Chapter Forty-Three — Temperance

作者: Miranda Miley
last update 最終更新日: 2026-01-08 10:20:29

Nora’s Point of View

The absence does not announce itself.

It doesn’t arrive as panic or grief or even disappointment. It slips in quietly, like a draft through a window I didn’t know was open, cooling the edges of everything without touching the center all at once.

I notice it because the mornings feel flatter.

Not wrong. Not empty.

Just… thinner.

I wake expecting the hush that sometimes lingers at the edge of awareness, the sense of being seen without being watched. It isn’t there. The room is only a room. The air only air.

I sit with that for a moment, breathing slowly, letting my body check itself for signs of distress.

There are none.

That should reassure me.

Instead, it confirms something I don’t want to name.

I go about my day with deliberate care. I answer messages. I make tea. I fold laundry that doesn’t need folding because the act of smoothing fabric feels grounding. My hands remember what my mind is trying not to circle.

He does not come back.

I do not look fo
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  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Forty-Nine — Mirrored Weight

    Kieran’s Point of View I do not feel it at first as pain. It arrives as echo. I am attending to a crossing when the pressure settles into me, slow and inward, as if the air itself gained density. The transition is routine. The soul moves with minimal confusion, guided cleanly into what comes next. There is no protest, no delay, no residue that clings afterward. By every measure, it should end cleanly. It does not. Something remains. Not from the soul. From elsewhere. I withdraw from the threshold and still myself, letting the system reassert its ordinary precision. Threads stay aligned. No recalibration sharpens. Fate does not tighten around me with urgency. The weight stays anyway. I know what it is only after I reject every other explanation. It is not suffering absorbed from the dead. It does not burn like the markings do when a soul is heavy. It does not flare, does not spike, does not demand action by force. It compresses. A slow, steady inward press, like restraint

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Forty-Eight — The Cost of Quiet

    Nora’s Point of View The first sign is not urgency. It is recognition. I am standing in line at the pharmacy when it happens. Fluorescent lights. A squeaking cart wheel somewhere behind me. A child whining softly in the aisle to my left. Ordinary. The woman in front of me turns slightly, just enough for her face to come into view. And I know. Not in the way I know cards or patterns. In the way you know when someone is holding something too heavy alone. She is not crying. Her posture is upright, careful. One hand grips the edge of the counter as if anchoring herself to something solid. The other fumbles with her wallet, fingers stiff with distraction. There is a tremor there. Small. Contained. I feel it in my chest like a pressure change. This is the moment. The kind I used to respond to without thinking. The kind that never announced itself with drama or spectacle. Just quiet need, brushing past. I do nothing. The realization lands immediately. I am choosing not to. She fin

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Forty-Seven — Erosion

    Kieran’s Point of View I feel it before I understand it. Not as signal. Not as summons. As absence. The system is quiet. No threads tighten. No crossings require attention. No transition approaches with urgency or confusion. By every measurable standard, this should be a period of equilibrium. And yet something is thinning. It takes me longer than it should to name what I am noticing, because it does not resemble any failure I have been trained to recognize. There is no anomaly flagged. No deviation marked for review. The quiet is altered. I do not feel her. Not the way I have. That absence is not unfamiliar. I have withheld action before. Non-interference is a tool. Silence, when applied carefully, can preserve order. I have relied on it across centuries without consequence. But this is not the same. This absence does not feel like containment. It feels like subtraction. I test the perception by redirecting attention elsewhere, tracing threads at a distance, following

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Forty-Six — Diminishment

    Nora’s Point of View Nothing collapses. That’s what surprises me. I wake the next morning expecting something sharper, regret maybe, or a sense of having crossed a line I can’t step back over without consequence. Instead, the day arrives intact. The light is ordinary. The air feels the same. My body is rested, not aching, not restless. There is no lingering heat under my skin, no urgency pressing at the edges of my thoughts. If anything, I feel muted. Not sad. Not empty. Just quieter in a way that feels new. I move through my morning routines without resistance. I make tea, rinse my mug, stand at the window long enough to register the street below without really seeing it. I am present, just not as vivid as I was yesterday. The certainty is still there. That hasn’t changed. I don’t doubt what happened, and I don’t reinterpret it in the harsh light of morning the way I’ve done with other things in my life. It was real. It was chosen. It mattered. But it doesn’t echo. That

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Forty-Five — Yield

    Kieran’s Point of View I should not have stayed. That truth arrives first, clean and unmistakable, before the system has time to register anything at all. I entered her dream to correct a failure of conduct. Disappearance is not restraint. Silence should not masquerade as care. I came to name what I had done and leave it where it belonged. That was the extent of my intent. I did not come to be undone. And yet the space did not answer to me. The dream did not respond to my presence. It responded to her certainty. I mistook familiarity for safety. She did not wait. She did not ask. She did not reach for permission. She chose. I remain still when the dream begins to thin, the edges loosening as waking draws her back. I stay long enough to ensure she is steady, long enough to confirm that what passed between us did not fracture her. It did not. That should have been the end of it. Instead, it clarifies everything. Her composure afterward was not fragile. She did not retreat

  • Claimed by Death    Chapter Forty-Four — Chosen

    Nora's Point of View The decision does not arrive all at once. It settles. Quietly. Firmly. With the same steady pull that has been guiding me since the morning I woke knowing what we shared was real. I move through the evening with intention, but not expectation. I don’t rush. I don’t linger. I wash my mug. I straighten the blanket on the couch. I choose my nightgown deliberately, soft cotton that feels familiar against my skin. When I slide beneath the covers, I lie on my back with my hands resting loosely at my sides, eyes open to the dark. I am not certain he will come. What I feel is not assurance. It is longing held carefully enough that it doesn’t turn into demand. He trusted me first. What he offered without asking still lives in me, warm and undeniable. I don’t chase the memory. I don’t try to summon him. I let myself want him without reaching. Sleep comes the way it always does when I stop forcing it. Gently. The shift is subtle. Sound stretches. The room loosen

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