⸻ ❛𝐖𝐑𝐀𝐏 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐄 𝐈 𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐎𝐒!❜
Rory Hargrove is obsessed to uncover the truth behind Barbara Holland's disappearance, while facing her brother's enemy and buried secrets from...
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MIND TRAVELING WAS PRETTY MUCH LIKE TRAVELING THROUGH TIME AND SPACE SIMULTANEOUSLY. You feel a chill in your stomach, a tingling that climbs up your body. And as you became a professional Echodiver, the environment around you grows almost unbearably real—so tangible it could almost be touched. Even though it was nothing more than a memory, and not even your own.
She knew it was false, because the scene was implanted inside a kind of infinite black box—Max's brain.
In the decorated gym, the lights spun across the polished floor, reflected by the disco ball hanging from the ceiling. Pale blue balloons drifted across the dance floor. The sides of the room were lined with streamers that fell to the ground, and the tables were covered with matching pale blue tablecloths.
Aurora barely remembered that 1984 Snowball. She hadn't been there, hadn't danced across that floor. That day, she had gone out with Steve to the outdoor cinema, where he asked her to be his girlfriend.
If they were here, it was because this was a scene tied to an important memory for Max. Oh, of course—the first kiss with Lucas. Interestingly, that day in '84 was important for Rory too. She found herself smiling.
"Holy shit!" the redhead let out, a soft chuckle escaping as she spun around and saw Rory a few feet away.
The older girl tilted her head, surprised. "You can see me?"
Aurora nodded, wide-eyed.
She could see herself. Max could see her. Better yet, they could hear each other. Almost insane. More real and tangible than it should ever be.
It was the first time this had happened—her very presence materializing inside someone else's memory, alongside the person themselves. Maybe this mind-blowing phenomenon only worked because of Vecna's powers of hypnosis and possession.
The sweet smiles they exchanged were abruptly shattered by mini heart attacks—innocent balloons popping in bursts of dark red blood. One by one.
The melody of The Police spinning on the turntable gave way to Dream a Little Dream of Me. Ella Fitzgerald's soothing voice, though gentle, would forever catapult Aurora back to the first attack of little Henry Creel.
It was a song orchestrating Vecna's symphony of death—a death that crept along the blue streamers, the flowers whose petals fell dry onto the tables, gradually withering and rotting before her eyes. The lights dimmed, fading into darkness, and before she could even register it, ashes began to float in the air, carrying the putrid stench of the Upside Down.
