The edge of the sky

CREDITS TO @averi49/💜Purple💜 FOR THIS CHAPTER

Aeryn's POV

(AIR-IN)

I always wondered what it was like to float.

I used to close my eyes in the pool while on my back and pretend I was soaring through the sky. It was a magical feeling.

But that wasn’t real. None of this was real.

The sky above me now wasn’t painted in blue or brushed with clouds—it was a dull silver, humming like it was alive, like it had a heartbeat. The air tasted metallic. Cold. Sharp. My limbs didn’t move, but I wasn’t paralyzed. It was more like the world around me had frozen and I was the only

thing still warm.

I blinked. Once. Twice.

The hum grew louder.

When I was a kid, I'd pretend I had wings. I’d jump from the top of the stairs with a towel wrapped around my shoulders like a cape, convinced that if I believed hard enough, gravity would hesitate. But it never did. It always pulled me down, relentless and silent.

This place—wherever I was—felt like the opposite. There was no weight. No floor. No sky. Just space. Endless, echoing space.

A voice crackled somewhere in the distance, barely more than a whisper:

“Subject 41, stabilization at 63%. Memory anchors are decaying faster than expected.”

Memory anchors?

I tried to speak, but my mouth wouldn’t open. My thoughts began to scatter like dust caught in a sunbeam. I tried to grab one—any one—to hold on to. My mother’s laugh. The color of the sun behind my eyelids. The sound of rain hitting the roof of our porch.

Gone. Slipping.

And then I saw her.

She wasn’t supposed to be here.

But there she was, standing in the middle of the nothingness, her hair moving like it was underwater. Brown eyes. Freckles. That small scar on her lip she hated but I always loved. Her name balanced on the edge of my tongue.

“Amira…”

The hum stopped.

She walked toward me slowly, like her feet were gently touching ground I couldn’t see. The closer she came, the more I remembered. The beach. The way she used to draw stars on the back of my hand when she was bored. The night she whispered, “You make me feel like I could fly.”

But she wasn’t smiling now.

“You weren’t supposed to wake up,” she said softly, almost regretfully.

I didn’t understand.

“This world—it’s not built to hold you anymore.”

“Where am I?” I managed to ask.

Amira looked down, her expression shifting between grief and guilt.

“You’re in a dream,” she whispered. “One that kept you safe while your body healed.

But they’re trying to pull you out now.”

I looked around again. The shimmer in the air. The way everything felt stitched together by threads of light and silence. It had never been real. But it had felt more real than anything else.

I met her eyes. “And you?”

She smiled for the first time, and it cracked something open inside me.

“I’m just the part of you that didn’t want to let go.”

I opened my eyes, but the sky above me was no longer the soft blue of summer afternoons. It was violet—deep, endless, humming. Stars flickered in slow motion, like they were breathing.

The water beneath me didn’t feel like water anymore. It held me—not just buoyed me, but cradled me like a memory I hadn’t earned.

I sat up, expecting to cough, to shiver, to feel the weight of gravity and chlorine

pulling me back down.

But I didn’t.

The pool had vanished.

I was in a field of glass. Or maybe it was ice. It shimmered in every direction, mirroring the violet sky above. I stood slowly, barefoot, but it didn’t feel cold. The air smelled like lavender and something sweet, like the way dreams sometimes taste when you’re halfway between sleep and waking.

A sound echoed in the distance. A laugh. Familiar.

I turned sharply.

“Hello?”

The laugh again. Closer this time. I took a step forward, and the glass beneath my feet didn’t crack—it rippled.

I kept walking.

And then I saw her.

She was standing barefoot like me, hair glowing in the soft violet light, eyes wide like she’d just stepped out of a dream too.

“You’re here,” she said, smiling.

“I... I don’t know where ‘here’ is,” I whispered.

She reached for my hand.

“That’s okay,” she said. “Neither do I.”

And just like that, I didn’t feel lost anymore.