There are places in the world that aren’t quite real. Places that hum when no one speaks, where fog slips up through the cracks in time and the wind moves like it remembers something.

They’re called Liminal Spaces—the in-between places. Roads that loop forever. Hills that whisper names you forgot. Seas with no shore. Forests that breathe. Graveyards that mourn you before you die. And each of them holds a creature too big, too old, or too strange to live in the real world.

And somehow... Hailee belonged to all of them.

She was born in a storm and raised by a grandmother who swore the world wasn’t broken—just shifted. Hailee didn’t cry when the shadows stretched long. She didn’t blink when a stag with a thousand antlers passed through her bedroom window like mist. She just stared back.

Because Hailee wasn’t like everyone else.

She could feel the in-betweens. Hear them. See them, even when they didn’t want to be seen. Some called her haunted. Others said chosen. But Hailee didn’t care what they called her. She had maps tattooed on her thoughts and bootlaces tied in holy knots. She wasn’t scared of the monsters in the mist.

She was one of them...at least thats how she felt

The bells rang soft and sweet as sunlight spilled across cobblestone streets. Fernmouth, her town, was caught in its weekly market buzz—barrels rolling, kids laughing, songs being plucked out of banjos and fiddles like ripe fruit. There were dogs chasing bread crumbs, merchants shouting in three different languages, and tiny flying lizards perching on the rooftops like seagulls.

Hailee wandered through it all like a thread through fabric. A little girl handed her a plum. An old man waved from his cart of potatoes shaped like hearts. The world was bright here. Loud. Friendly. Full of everything real and not quite real.

She passed stalls filled with enchanted shoelaces, weather jars, and books that growled when opened too fast. One stall sold shadow umbrellas—"for the places where light bites back." Another sold mirrors that only reflected your soul.

And for a moment, just a small one, Hailee let herself forget the pull of the in-between. The feeling in her bones that something was shifting again. That the cracks were getting wider.

That a creature had started walking the Liminal Roads again.