Chapter Fourteen: Erased

The moment Naomi and Ezra stepped out of the sheriff's office, the town changed.

The air thickened, heavy and unnatural. The streetlights along the road flickered, stretching their shadows into jagged, impossible shapes.

Naomi's pulse spiked.

The town wasn't just watching them anymore. It was rearranging itself, trying to decide if they should still exist.

Ezra inhaled sharply. "Naomi."

She followed his gaze-

And her stomach plummeted.

The main road was gone.

Or rather-

It had shifted.

The buildings weren't where they had been minutes ago. Black Hollow's familiar streets were twisted, wrong, like a half-remembered dream trying to take shape.

Naomi turned back to the sheriff's station.

But-

It wasn't there.

The old wooden structure had vanished, replaced by an empty lot of dead grass and weeds, as if it had never existed at all.

Her breath hitched.

"Ezra," she whispered. "The Between isn't just erasing time." She swallowed hard. "It's erasing reality."

Ezra's jaw tightened. "Then we need to move."

But-

Move where?

Black Hollow was no longer Black Hollow.

It was shifting, warping, folding in on itself like something trying to reshape the past.

And if they didn't get out now-

They would be rewritten with it.

The Vanishing Streets

They ran.

Through alleyways that stretched too long, past houses that blinked in and out of existence.

Naomi's chest burned, her breath coming in sharp gasps. Every step felt like pushing against an invisible tide, as if the Between was dragging them backward, trying to undo them.

Then-

A sound.

A low, distant hum.

Naomi slowed, heart pounding. Ezra grabbed her arm, his grip tight.

"Keep moving," he urged.

But Naomi turned toward the noise, her instincts screaming.

Something was coming.

The hum grew louder, vibrating through her bones. The air rippled, like heat distortion on pavement.

Then-

A figure emerged from the shifting dark.

Not a person.

Not human.

It stood at the center of the street, its form unstable, flickering between solid and transparent. Its face was a blur, features shifting as if struggling to hold onto an identity.

But its eyes-

Its eyes were locked on Ezra.

Naomi's stomach turned.

It wasn't just some ghostly apparition.

It was a memory of him.

Ezra stiffened. "What the hell is that?"

Naomi's breath was shallow. "It's you."

The figure tilted its head, mimicking Ezra's exact posture. Its lips parted, and when it spoke-

It was his voice.

"You don't belong here anymore."

Ezra froze.

The thing took a slow step forward, its body glitching, flickering between different versions of itself.

Naomi grabbed Ezra's wrist. "We have to go."

Ezra snapped out of it.

Together, they sprinted down the only road that still existed, their shadows stretching unnaturally beneath the dying streetlights.

The thing followed.

But it didn't run.

It simply walked, its movements perfectly synchronized with Ezra's, like a reflection in a cracked mirror.

And every time it took a step-

Reality behind them vanished.

Buildings, street signs, houses-everything collapsed into nothing, swallowed by the Between's ever-hungry void.

Naomi's heart slammed against her ribs.

They were running out of world.

The Doorway

Then-

Up ahead-

A light.

Warm and golden, cutting through the Between's cold emptiness.

Ezra saw it too. "There!"

They pushed forward, lungs burning, muscles aching. The Between snarled behind them, its grasp closing in-

But they reached the light.

Naomi threw herself through first, Ezra right behind her.

The moment they crossed the threshold-

Silence.

The hum vanished. The air warmed. The world solidified around them.

Naomi gasped, blinking rapidly.

They were inside a house.

Not Ezra's. Not hers.

But...

It felt familiar.

Ezra sucked in a breath, his gaze fixed on something across the room.

Naomi followed his stare-

And her heart stopped.

A woman stood there, staring back at them.

She was real.

Solid. Alive.

And Naomi recognized her instantly.

Lilith Calloway.

Ezra's wife.

Missing. Supposedly dead for years.

But standing here, now, alive and unchanged.

Lilith's lips parted.

"You shouldn't have come back," she whispered.

Naomi's breath hitched.

Lilith wasn't just alive.

She knew what was happening.

And that meant-

She might be the only one who could tell them the truth.