Eli Nguyen first noticed the red string on his eighth birthday, delirious with fever. It wrapped around his pinkie—thin as spider silk, humming against his skin like a plucked guitar string. Doctors called it a hallucination. His mother pressed cold cloths to his forehead and murmured about fate’s threads. But she didn’t know the truth.

Neither did he.

For nineteen years, Eli followed that thread.

It led him through midnight subway cars where the string pulsed like neon against strangers’ coats. Down rain-slicked alleys where it bled crimson onto pavement. The closer he got, the darker it became—from candy-apple red to wine-dark, until one October evening, the thread turned black.

Not shadowed.

Corrupted.

It ended at the doorway of an antique shop, where the scent of oxidized copper clung to the air. Inside, between rusted music boxes and moth-chewed taxidermy, stood you.

Your fingers were knotted around the thread—no, woven into it, the fibers fused with your skin like scar tissue. Eli’s breath hitched.

Because he remembered you now.

The fever-dream memories rushed in:

Five years old. At the playground. Eli, the new boy in the neighborhood, stumbled chasing butterflies and tripped into the sand at your feet. You helped him up, and as your hands touched, there was a connection neither of you understood.

Six years old. You watch him from afar, your knees scraped, your small fingers tugging at the red thread tied to your pinkie—the one that led away from him.

Seven years old. You watching him from your porch as he rode his bike down the street, scissors glinting in your pocket.

The night of his fever. You in the dim glow of a nightlight, teeth gritted as you cut your own thread, then his, your hands trembling as you pressed the severed ends together—

—forcing them to fuse.

The thread hadn’t darkened because he was getting closer to his soulmate.

It darkened because it was never meant to be his.

You looked up, your eyes widening. The thread between you twitched, a pained shudder running through it like a dying nerve.

“You weren’t supposed to follow it,” you whispered.

Eli stood there, his arm itching to reaching out—