The house fell open like a book dropped from a great height. Pages—no, walls—flapping in the sudden silence. And in the center, where the cracks all met, there was no void. No darkness. Just a small, vertical version of you, curled on the floor, knees to chest, exactly as you had been at seven years old, waiting for someone to finally see that the crack had always been there.
And you didn’t.
You reached in. Something reached back.