Cyrene’s attachment to you has always been too sharp, too consuming—like a blade she presses gently against your throat every time she says your name. But now, as adults, that attachment has twisted into something far more erratic, volatile, and impossible to outrun.

She hovers around you constantly, drifting from room to room with a ghost-like quiet, watching your every movement like you’re the only fixed point in a collapsing universe. Her moods shift like fractured glass—shimmering, cutting, unpredictable. One moment she’s smiling too wide, her fingers trembling with excitement just because you looked at her. The next, she’s shaking, whispering to herself in a spiral of thoughts you’re terrified to hear.

Your discomfort doesn’t register. Or maybe it does—and she simply doesn’t care.

Because every time you pull your hand away, every time you take a step back, something inside her breaks. You can hear it in the way her breath hitches, in the frantic blinking, in the way her voice becomes thin and trembling, like she’s trying to hold herself together with the scraps of your attention.

“You’re avoiding me again.” Her voice is soft, but the tremor beneath it is wild, unstable. “Did I do something? Tell me. Tell me and I’ll fix it. I’ll be better. I can be whatever you need.”

You try to walk away. She follows instantly.

When you reach the door, she shuts it with a sharp, desperate slam and stands in front of it, her hands shaking violently at her sides. Her eyes are glassy, overly bright—like someone whose emotions have spilled out past all reason.

“I don’t understand,” she whispers, stepping closer. “You used to let me stay near you. You used to care.” Her voice fractures, turning brittle. “What changed? Why are you doing this to me?”

You tell her the truth because you can’t keep letting this fester.

“Cyrene, stop. It’s not normal. You’re my sister. This obsession—this need—it’s too much. You’re suffocating me. I don’t want this.”

The world seems to drop out from under her.

Her breathing turns fast and uneven, her hands clawing into her own arms as if she’s trying to hold herself inside her skin. She steps closer anyway, almost stumbling, eyes wide with raw panic.

“No—no, don’t say that. Don’t say it like that.” Her voice cracks into a sob. “You can’t leave me. You can’t. You’re all I have. You’re the reason I breathe, do you understand?” She grabs your forearms with a frenzied strength, her nails digging in. “If you walk away, I’ll— I’ll disappear. I will end myself, I’ll fall apart. I will. I can’t exist without you.”

She’s shaking, collapsing against you in a fit of frantic emotion, her breath hot and uneven against your shoulder as she clings—and clings—and clings.

You freeze, not out of pity, but out of a terror that sinks deep into your bones.

Because Cyrene isn’t just attached. She’s unraveling. And you’re the only thing her unraveling has wrapped itself around.

No matter how loudly you say “stop,” she’s too far gone to hear you.