The repair shop was tucked into a quiet corner of the industrial district, squeezed between businesses that had seen better days. The air carried the scent of burnt plastic and grease, layered over something older and stale. A flickering fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting a sickly hue over the cracked linoleum floor. Behind the counter, a teenager with slack posture and glazed eyes tapped idly at a computer keyboard.

  The door swung open. Camilla stepped inside.

  Her coat fell neatly around her knees, black against the drab interior. She moved with deliberate pace, her heels soft against the scuffed floor. At the counter, she placed a USB stick down with a faint clink.

  “I need footage,” she said. “From your security cameras. Last Thursday night, between ten p.m. and midnight.”

  The teenager blinked, rubbing his eyes. “What for?”

  Camilla offered a smile — small, practised. “You’ll know soon enough.”

  He hesitated, glancing at the screen, then back at her. “I don’t really—”

  She tilted her head slightly. “You will. I’ll make sure you get compensated.”

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his brow furrowing. After a moment, he nodded, muttered something inaudible, and disappeared into the back.

  Camilla stayed where she was, hands resting lightly on the counter. The buzzing light above her continued its pulse. She didn’t move, didn’t speak.

  Twenty-two minutes passed.

  When the teenager returned, a portable hard drive dangled from one hand. He plugged it into the machine, and the monitor sprang to life. Grainy footage filled the screen — the exterior of a warehouse, badly lit, poorly framed.

  “There,” the teen muttered, pointing with a bitten fingernail. “That’s the time frame.”

  Camilla leaned closer. Her eyes followed the shifting images: a squad car pulling up, two uniformed officers stepping out. One lifted a flashlight. The footage jumped. A flare of light. Then another.

  She scrubbed back through the footage and slowed it down. The mouse in her hand moved with even, careful control. Frame by frame, the scene advanced.

  A figure appeared in the doorway — female, uniformed, arm raised.

  In a freeze-frame, a faint glint appeared beneath the collar of the uniform.

  Camilla didn’t speak. She stared.

  The gleam caught again in a later frame. Small. Oval-shaped. Just visible beneath the shirt.

  She pressed pause.

  “Can you zoom in on that cop’s ID badge?” she asked, still watching the screen. “Enough to read her badge number?”

  The teen scoffed. “This isn’t CSI, lady. The footage is garbage.”

  Camilla said nothing. Her eyes remained on the figure.

  She reached out and closed the window. Her fingertips rested briefly on the mouse. Then she stepped back from the counter, coat settling around her legs.

  Without another word, she turned and walked out into the night.

  Elias didn’t know when it started, just that it wasn’t the usual nothingness.

  No blank slate. No skipped beat. No sense of absence followed by return.

  This time, he was there.

  He was aware.

  His feet weren’t on the ground, exactly, but something was beneath him, a surface that wasn’t solid so much as elusive, like fog that had agreed to hold him. Around him: motion. Light, dust, colour. The world curved in on itself like a collapsing shell, silent and deafening all at once.

  He staggered, instinctively bracing for a fall that never came.

  And Riya was beside him.

  That, more than anything, told him this was different.

  She was real, solid, breathing, glancing around with sharp eyes that didn’t seem panicked. She didn’t look like a vision or a dream. She shouldn’t be here.

  Elias blinked hard, trying to focus. Nothing stayed still long enough to land in his vision. Shapes drifted like forgotten thoughts—fragments of things that wanted to be rooms or skies or symbols, but never fully formed.

  It felt like he was standing inside a memory someone had half-erased.

  “Where are we?” he whispered, before realising he’d spoken.

  Riya looked over, brow furrowed. “You don’t recognise it?”

  Elias shook his head. “No. I mean—I think I’ve... been here. Or maybe not here, but somewhere like it, when I disappear. But I never remembered it before. Not like this.”

  He turned slowly, taking it in. The space seemed to respond to movement, not visually, but intentionally. Things tilted toward thought. A shimmer in the air flickered when he focused on it, like the surface of water reacting to a breath.

  “It’s part of the locket,” he murmured. “Inside it, somehow. I guess this is where I go when I vanish. But I’ve never been here like this. I never knew I was here.”

  He couldn’t say why that unsettled him so much. Maybe because he’d always assumed nonexistence when unsummoned—like a pause button. Now, it felt more like he’d been buried alive in a pocket of forgotten space, unthinking and still.

  Riya had begun to walk, her eyes scanning the not-quite-horizon.

  Elias followed, reluctant but drawn. The moment he focused on something grounded—structure, definition—a ripple formed. Stone rose beneath them, creating a floor. Then a curve, a column. A wall, barely sketched into being.

  He drew in a sharp breath.

  “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  Riya turned, watching as the wall grew taller. “But you did. You’re shaping this.”

  He didn’t answer. It was true, and it was terrifying.

  Because if he could shape it now, what had he been when he couldn’t think at all? What did this place do when left to drift?

  Riya’s mood, by contrast, was lighter. She began gesturing—half-joking, half-serious—offering suggestions. “Alright, if we’re stuck here, I want some kind of couch. Maybe a big window. No, wait—a skylight. That shows stars.”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  He watched, stunned, as the space obliged, his mind automatically attuned to her needs. Slowly, the space obeyed.

  “You’ve got more influence than you realise,” she said.

  “Only with you here,” he murmured.

  Riya raised an eyebrow but didn’t challenge the point.

  Elias pressed a palm to the forming wall. It was warm. Not physically—emotionally. It responded to his presence, as if it knew him... knew his thoughts. Or maybe remembered them.

  This isn’t just a space, he thought. This is me. Or a part of me.

  The idea left him dizzy.

  Riya wandered back toward him, her fingers grazing the air where a shelf of books had begun to emerge. She tapped the spine of one that looked half-finished—its title crawling across the surface like ink deciding what to become.

  “Let’s go back for a second,” she said. “Just to check something.”

  She looked at the locket, then closed her eyes. “I wish to go back to the apartment. Just briefly.”

  The shift was instant, dust and colour spiralling inward. The locket’s magic yanked them out of the space like a rubber band snapping. One blink, and they were back in the apartment—couch, walls, evening light through the window. The sudden solidity was almost jarring.

  Elias reached instinctively for balance, heart still hammering.

  “Okay,” Riya said, glancing around. “Now...” She took a breath. “I wish to return to the space inside the locket. The one Elias enters when he disappears.”

  And just like that, they were back. Same walls. Same shimmering window. Same unfinished bookshelf. None of it had reset.

  Elias exhaled, relieved. “It stayed.” He dropped to sit against one of the stone walls, exhausted. “It’s real. It’s not just noise. It stays.”

  Riya gave a satisfied nod, already moving toward the floating books. She picked up the one with the slithery title.

  Elias didn’t need to ask.

  The Book of Bound Things.

  Even before she cracked the cover, he could feel it in his bones.

  This space wasn’t just part of the locket.

  It was a reflection.

  And now that Riya was here, he was starting to see what he was really made of.

  Elias sat back against the low curve of a wall he had shaped just minutes earlier. The edges were still faintly warm beneath his fingers, like the stone remembered being made. He hadn’t expected it to feel comfortable—real—but it did. More than that, it felt his.

  That was still strange.

  The space inside the locket had never been like this before. Or maybe it had—but if so, he’d never been conscious of it. His memories of past times here were fragmented and dim, like trying to recall a dream that had dissolved on waking. Flashes of fog. A sense of motion. Never anything solid.

  But now, with Riya here—awake, everything was different.

  His space held.

  She sat nearby, curled on the couch he had shaped with a thought, her legs tucked up under her, The Book of Bound Things open in her lap. He had made that couch for her instinctively, the way you’d open a door for someone without thinking. It fit her, somehow. And the sight of her nestled into it made something in his chest settle.

  He kept working quietly, as she read aloud. Nothing dramatic—just small refinements. A shallow platform under his feet, for when he stood too long. A low bench to lean against, formed just behind his shoulder. A warmer light near the ceiling, shaped like the hanging bulbs he remembered from the library stacks.

  It was strange, this sense of agency. Stranger still, that it brought him calm.

  Her voice drifted across the space, even and thoughtful. “The jinn are bound to foci—items constituting a token, a vessel, an object of the master’s choosing. Their purpose is simple: to serve. Not out of loyalty, but out of compulsion. The jinn are slaves to their foci, nothing more. Bound to the words, not the intent.”

  Elias didn’t let the words stop him, though they curled through him like cold mist.

  He ran a hand along the new stone shelf taking shape to his right. His shelf. Even if everything else was out of his hands, even if he had no choice in being bound—this part was his.

  It wasn’t loyalty that bound him to Riya. That was the truth. But she hadn’t twisted her words to trap him. Not yet. She had spoken plainly, and his power had answered. That counted for something.

  She turned the page. “Freedom may be possible, but only through a deliberate ritual... one performed by a willing and able owner, with a deep understanding of the bond. But it is not without cost. The jinni or the owner both may lose power, or if the ritual fails, the bond may become irreversible.”

  He closed his eyes briefly. He hadn’t dared hope for that before—not really. Freedom hadn't been something he'd had much time to speculate on, a concept that lived outside their current reality. But now, hearing it confirmed—ritual, cost, risk—it made the idea real. Scarier, yes. But real.

  He imagined a tall, narrow panel forming beside the bookcase. Somewhere to hang... what? He wasn’t sure yet. But he left it blank, for now. Space for something future-shaped.

  Riya’s voice dropped to a murmur. “Should an owner be killed by another, the foci's ownership passes to the one who strikes the fatal blow...” She trailed off, visibly chewing on the idea.

  Elias stared at the floor. The weight of that truth wasn’t new, but now it had definition. Her action—her bullet—hadn’t just interrupted the ritual. It had made her inherit the bond.

  He looked at her, and for the first time, the knowledge didn’t make him flinch. She had pulled the trigger, yes. But she hadn’t done it for power.

  She had done it to stop someone from being hurt.

  That mattered.

  She kept reading. “If an owner dies of natural causes or by their own hand, the focus becomes unowned. The jinni is temporarily free, but remains bound to the object, awaiting someone new to claim it.”

  The fear slid in under his ribs like cold water. Unowned. Not free. Just... waiting. An object... a thing left on a shelf. Like a book no one would read again.

  No wonder some jinn tried to scare people off. If you couldn’t pick your freedom, at least you could pick your prison.

  “Many jinn attempt to manipulate new claimants,” she read. “To convince them not to claim the focus. Scare them. Trick them into thinking it’s cursed. Or pretend there are rules—such as three wishes and done.”

  Elias let a faint smile touch the corner of his mouth. “That one’s classic,” he murmured. “Everyone believes in the three-wish rule.”

  Riya looked up. “Makes sense. It’s cleaner. Easier to walk away when you think the rules are done.”

  He nodded. Then he shaped a low table between them, the surface smooth and unfinished. Another place for books. For tea. For her feet, if she wanted.

  The locket’s space didn’t feel so alien anymore. It felt like a quiet apartment without a ceiling. Like a place you could breathe, if you didn’t think too hard about why you were there.

  “A jinni is weak when first bound,” she went on, “but grows stronger with each wish it grants. But that strength is always tied to the focus—and the owner’s will.”

  Elias felt it. The power building in him wasn’t just some magical charge—it was memory, repetition, transformation. Every time Riya made a wish, something deep in him shifted. His awareness sharpened. His sense of shape and self became clearer.

  But it all braided back to the locket.

  He glanced down at his hand. Flexed it. Wondered what would happen if the bond ever truly broke—would all of it vanish with it?

  Riya was reading the last section now. Her voice had gone softer. “Beware, owner. Do not become too attached to jinn. Strange effects may bleed into your life—dreams, behaviour shifts, physical ailments. If a jinni becomes a presence in your life... not just a servant, not even the gods may divine your fate.”

  Elias looked up. Met her gaze across the small space.

  He felt it. That presence. Not just in her life, but hers in his. Stabilising this place. Drawing shape from the fog. Making it hold.

  “It’s not just magic,” he said, in absent thought. “It’s a connection.”

  Elias leaned back against the wall and let himself breathe. The couch still cradled her. The lights still glowed. The window still opened onto a sky that couldn’t possibly be real.

  And still, he hoped that if she left again, the space would remain. That when he returned, he would remember. And this time, it would still be his.

  He turned slightly, adding a simple backrest to the bench he’d half-finished. He wasn’t looking at Riya now, but he felt her presence steady behind him. She wasn’t speaking, but she wasn’t leaving either.

  The quiet stretched until she turned the page.

  Her brow furrowed. “This next part… It’s about something else.”

  He moved to her side as she read aloud.

  “Liches, through extreme rituals, sacrifice their souls to bind themselves to foci. Though practically immortal, their existence becomes one of servitude—bound not to a master, but to their own obsessive wills.”

  Riya exhaled through her nose and shook her head. “Yeah... no thanks. That’s a different mess.”

  She skimmed the rest, then gently shut the book, her hand resting on the cover. Elias sat down across from her on the low platform he’d built, the polished surface still faintly shimmering where the stone hadn’t fully set. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

  There was a difference between knowing he was bound and understanding the shape of that bond.

  He had thought it was simple: wish, serve, vanish.

  But this wasn’t a chain—it was a net. Woven from death, transfer, fear, and power. Loopholes and clauses he hadn’t even known existed until Riya read them aloud.

  She hadn’t meant to claim him. But she had.

  And now, more than ever, he understood what that meant.

  This locket wasn’t just an object. It was a doorway, a prison, a memory, a future. And if she ever slipped away—by choice, or time, or fate—he would be left inside it.

  Waiting.

  Waiting for someone else, with no way to predict who that would be.

  He looked over at her.

  She wasn’t like Camilla. She didn’t twist words or manipulate the pages of that book. She asked questions. She read the truth, even when it was uncomfortable.

  Even when it scared her.

  Elias shifted slightly, pressing his hand against the warm stone beneath them. This place—they’d made it together. And it held. For now. He just had to hope it would hold long enough.

  Long enough for them to figure out how to break the cycle. Or rewrite it.

  Or survive it.