The funeral had ended, but something inside Alex refused to settle. He had buried his wife, but the silence in the graveyard felt louder than any grief he had ever known. And then, just as he was escaping the weight of mourning, a beggar girl spoke words that shattered the last pieces of reality: “Uncle, your wife is alive. But it won’t make things better for you. Come with me…”
Alex stumbled, the sun disappearing behind a veil of black. He gripped the car door for support, struggling to breathe, as if the earth itself had tilted.
He turned.
The girl—barefoot, no more than eight or nine—stood beside the iron cemetery gate. Her dress was worn thin, and her tangled hair stuck to her face like cobwebs. But her eyes were too clear, too knowing for her age.
“W-what did you say?” Alex croaked.
She didn’t repeat herself. She simply gestured with her small hand. “Please, Uncle. We don’t have much time.”
Every logical thread in Alex’s mind snapped one by one. His wife, Elena, had died. He’d seen her in the hospital bed, pale and lifeless. He had identified the body. He had paid for the coffin, signed the papers. He had stood in a sea of black clothing and heard the priest say final words.
And yet…
The girl walked away from the gate, toward the alley beside the cemetery, not waiting to see if he would follow.
Alex hesitated. Then he cursed under his breath and moved.
The alley was narrow, flanked by rusted fences and abandoned shacks. The deeper they went, the quieter it got. Even the wind held its breath.
“Where are we going?” Alex asked.
“To where they took her,” the girl replied.
“They? Who—what are you talking about?”
The girl glanced over her shoulder. “Your wife isn’t dead. She was taken. Just like others before her. Not all of them come back.”
“You’re mad,” he said flatly, slowing his steps.
“Maybe,” she said. “But you gave me your last coin without asking for anything. That means you remember how to care. And people like you are rare.”
Alex’s heart pounded. This had to be some twisted dream. But the pain in his knees, the chill in the air, the scent of dried flowers still clinging to his suit—all of it felt far too real.
They reached an old stone shed with a door made of uneven wooden planks. The girl knocked three times, paused, then twice more.
The door creaked open.
Inside, candles lit a small room. A man, ancient and hunched, stood by a shelf filled with small jars, feathers, and bones. He didn’t speak. He merely pointed to a chair.
Alex sat, unsure if he was trembling from fear or cold.
“She told him,” the girl said softly. “Tell him what he needs to do.”
The old man finally looked at Alex, eyes gray and deep like river stones.
“Your wife’s death was orchestrated,” he said. “They needed her to vanish. But not from this world—from yours. She was taken to the border place, between what you see and what you don’t.”
Alex clenched his fists. “This is nonsense.”
“Is it?” the man said. “Then explain why your wife had no shadow in her coffin.”
Alex blinked. He hadn’t noticed. It had all happened so fast, so numb. But now that he thought about it… when the coffin was opened briefly before burial, the light had touched her skin—yet nothing had fallen across the lid.
“No shadow means not truly dead,” the man said. “It means her spirit is displaced.”
“Displaced where?”
“To the Threshold. A place between memory and forgetting. And if you want to bring her back, you’ll have to go there.”
Alex looked at the girl. “Why you? Why are you helping me?”
She looked down at her feet. “Because once, someone helped me.”
“And this… this ‘Threshold’? How do I get there?”
The old man pulled a small glass orb from a pouch. Inside it shimmered with a dim silver mist. “Swallow this. It will numb your body and sharpen your soul. You will enter in sleep, but it won’t feel like dreaming. And you must find her quickly. If you don’t… she will forget you. And then, she won’t want to come back.”
Alex stared at the orb in his palm. Everything in him screamed that this was madness. But what if it wasn’t?
He thought of Elena—her laugh, her fierce kindness, the way her fingers used to find his in the dark. Could he live with the possibility that she was out there, lost, because he had been too afraid to believe?
He swallowed the orb.
The light dimmed. The girl held his hand as his eyelids grew heavy.
“Remember,” she whispered. “She might not recognize you at first. But don’t give up.”
The world blurred, spun, and then…
Darkness fell.
But not the kind from sleep. This was weightless, endless… a silence thick as tar.
Then, somewhere in the vast black, a door opened.
Alex stepped through the door and found himself in a place that wasn’t quite darkness and wasn’t quite light.
The air shimmered as if woven from half-remembered dreams. Strange colors floated through the sky, shifting like the hues of an old photograph left in the sun too long. There was no ground beneath his feet, only a vast surface of smooth glass reflecting skies that did not exist.
“Where am I?” he whispered.
“You already know,” a voice said behind him.
He turned.
It was the girl again—but not the same. She stood taller now, older, draped in a white robe threaded with ash-gray patterns. Her eyes still held that same knowing look.
“This is the Threshold,” she said. “The space between memory and erasure. Between love and oblivion.”
“And Elena?” he asked, voice cracking. “Is she here?”
She nodded. “But she’s fading. The longer she remains, the more she forgets who she was. Soon she’ll forget you.”
“No,” Alex said. “I won’t let that happen.”
She pointed. “Then go. Follow the sound of your truest memory of her.”
He listened.
At first, there was silence. Then, a faint sound floated to him—laughter. Not just any laughter. Her laughter, from the morning they had danced in the kitchen barefoot, spinning around to a radio that barely worked, spilling coffee on the floor and not caring.
He ran toward the sound.
With each step, images flickered to life around him—fragments of their life together: her hands brushing his hair back on their wedding night; her eyes filled with mischief when she surprised him with his favorite lemon cake; her tears when they lost their unborn child; her resilience when she smiled through grief anyway.
Then he saw her.
Elena stood on a glass hill, looking out into nothing. She wore the same soft blue dress she used to garden in. Her hair was longer than he remembered, flowing in a wind that didn’t exist.
“Elena!” he called.
She turned slowly, frowning. “Who…?”
“It’s me,” he said, approaching carefully. “Alex.”
She took a step back. “That name… it feels like something I once knew.”
Pain sliced through him. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something he had almost forgotten: her pressed flower bookmark, tucked inside a tiny leather notebook they used to leave each other notes in.
He held it out to her. “You gave me this. On the day we promised we’d never stop trying. Remember?”
She looked at it. Her fingers trembled as she took it.
“I…” Her voice broke. “I remember… something warm. Something real.”
He stepped closer. “Come home, Elena. Please.”
Suddenly, the air shifted. The warmth evaporated.
A figure emerged—tall, faceless, draped in a robe of fog and silence. Its voice wasn’t heard so much as felt, echoing in every nerve:
“She belongs to the forgetting now. Let go.”
“No,” Alex growled. “She doesn’t belong to you.”
“She chose peace,” the voice said. “She left the pain behind. And so must you.”
Alex turned to Elena. “Did you? Did you choose to forget me?”
She looked torn, eyes clouded with confusion. “I didn’t want to hurt anymore. Not after… after everything.”
“You don’t have to forget to heal,” he said. “We were broken, yes. But we were. We lived. That matters.”
Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m scared. What if I can’t go back?”
“Then I’ll stay here with you,” he said, voice steady. “I’d rather be lost with you than saved alone.”
She stepped closer. Her fingers touched his face, and the moment she did—the light around them pulsed.
Cracks formed beneath their feet in the glassy ground. The faceless figure shrieked, folding in on itself as if collapsing into time.
The girl’s voice echoed from afar: “You’ve chosen memory over silence. Love over forgetting.”
The world shattered like a mirror—and they fell.
Alex woke in the old shed with a gasp.
The girl sat beside him, her hand still in his.
Across from them—Elena.
She lay curled on a mattress in the corner, breathing shallow but alive.
He crawled to her side. Her eyes fluttered open. This time, when she looked at him, she knew.
“Alex…” she whispered. “I saw you. I felt you.”
He laughed, crying freely now. “You came back to me.”
They held each other, trembling and wordless, two souls stitched back together by something beyond understanding.
In the weeks that followed, no one could explain what had happened. The death certificate remained. The hospital records didn’t change. But Elena lived. She remembered the Threshold, and the choice she’d made. They both did.
They didn’t try to explain it. Not to doctors. Not to friends.
Instead, they moved. Quietly, to a small town near the sea. They planted a garden, cooked together again, danced to broken radios, and left each other notes in the old leather notebook.
And every week, they left bread and fruit by the cemetery gate.
Sometimes, a barefoot girl would come by and take it.
She never said a word.
But once, she smiled—and Alex saw that same knowing glint in her eyes.
As if to say, you remembered. You chose love. You came back.
