That night, Hale didn't sleep.
He stared at the ceiling until his eyes burned. The silence in the house wasn't comforting. It pressed into him like a weight.
3:11 AM.
He was already sitting up in bed when the minute changed.
3:12.
The cold came instantly. A chill that seemed to ripple through his spine, down his arms, into his bones.
He turned toward the desk.
The photograph—the one of him and Ivy—was gone.
He checked the drawer where he had hidden it.
Empty.
No torn paper. No trace. Like it had never existed.
He grabbed his sketchbook.
One page was filled in. A page he didn't remember drawing.
At first it looked like just lines—thin, sharp, erratic. Then, he realized it resembled something like a memory map. Places. Shapes. Angles that shouldn't make sense.
At the bottom corner, smudged in charcoal: a tiny spiral.
He didn't know what it meant.
But the spiral burned into his mind as if it were familiar. As if he'd seen it somewhere. Or everywhere.
A shiver moved through him.
And when he turned his head toward the doorway, the room beyond looked… different. Just slightly.
As if something had been here. Just a second ago.
And then the feeling faded.
He stood still in the silence. One thought in his head:
If Ivy wasn't the same… who was she?