Page 64 of Torn Ivy
A world where I never discovered my chaos magick.
A reality where Tate and I never met.
A dimension where the perfect beings won.
Timelines branching endlessly, each one carrying a fragment of who I was.
My consciousness stretches thinner across the multiverse. I try to hold onto memories, onto the core of who I am, but they slip away like starlight through glass.
The taste of Tate’s kiss dissolves into mathematical equations.
The sound of Torin’s laugh becomes a burst of red energy.
The feeling of Bram’s touch transforms into geometric patterns.
My mother’s face fragments into infinite possibilities.
In some dimensions, I am aware of my body lying broken in Cathy’s garden. I see through fractured perception as Tate holds my hand, as Torin’s eyes fill with grief, as Bram’s shadows dance uselessly around my shifting form. But these images feel increasingly distant, like memories of memories of dreams.
I should be scared. But fear requires a coherent self to experience it, and I am anything but coherent now. I am uncertainty given consciousness, chaos magick torn apart at levels deeper than physical.
I am Ivy Hammond.
But am I when my very essence has been scattered across dimensions I was never meant to know?
Life wanted order? Well, they’ve achieved its opposite - chaos so complete it transcends physical reality. I am their antithesis taken to its logical extreme, order’s nightmare made manifest across dimensions.
Each heartbeat occurs in a different dimension.
Each thought spans multiple realities.
Each emotion resonates across quantum states.
Each moment of existence fragments further.
I am scattered.
I am undone.
I am lost.
I am torn apart.
30
BRAM
We stand in stunned silence,staring at the broken form that was once Ivy, now resting on Cathy’s couch inside the too-quiet house. Reality still feels wrong, like it’s been stretched too thin and has snapped back into place but is saggy. My insides twitch and writhe, sensing the lingering chaos in the air.
“We need to do something,” Tate says, his voice cracking. He hasn’t let go of Ivy’s hand, even though parts of her keep phasing in and out of existence. “There has to be a way to bring her back.”
“Back from where?” Torin asks bitterly. “She’s been torn apart. Scattered across dimensions. We have no idea where she is or how many pieces she’s in.”
Tate growls at Torin’s blunt words, but the vampire is right. I feel a chill run through me at his words. As a Fae, I understand liminality better than most, except maybe vampires. The spaces between realms, the thin places where worlds overlap. But this is beyond anything I’ve ever encountered.
“We start by stabilising what’s left of her physical form,” Cathy says, all business despite the horror of the situation. “My prototype might be able to disrupt the decoherence fluctuations, at least temporarily.”
She aims her weapon at Ivy’s shifting body.
