The Threshold Keeper By Nyx Rose

The mist arrived on the third day of Aura’s vigil.

She’d been kneeling at the Crossing Stone since dawn on the first day, as tradition demanded. Three days and three nights without food or sleep, waiting for the dead to release their claim on her brother’s soul. Only then could Finn pass from the shadow realm into whatever lay beyond.

But the mist wasn’t supposed to come.

It rolled across the moorland like a living thing, silver-gray and thick enough to swallow sound. Aura’s breath caught as it reached the circle of standing stones. The Crossing Stone—a pillar of black granite taller than three men—began to hum.

“Hello?” Her voice disappeared into the fog. “Finn?”

A figure emerged from the mist. Not Finn. A woman in robes that seemed woven from twilight itself, her face ageless and terrible in its beauty.

“You’ve been waiting,” the woman said. Not a question.

“For my brother. He died seven days ago. The ritual—”

“I know the ritual.” The woman circled the Crossing Stone, one pale hand trailing across its surface. Where her fingers touched, symbols flared blue and faded. “Three days of vigil. The living anchor holds the thread while the dead one finds their way through the Between. Simple. Old magic.” She stopped, fixing Aura with eyes like frozen stars. “But your brother isn’t coming.”

Aura’s chest tightened. “He has to. The priests said—”

“The priests tell you what they’ve always told everyone. They don’t tell you what happens when someone gets lost in the Between.” The woman gestured at the mist. “This is the Between, girl. The space that isn’t space. The time that isn’t time. And your brother is trapped in it.”

“Then I’ll find him.”

“Will you?” The woman smiled without warmth. “The Between has no paths. No directions. Those who enter rarely leave. Most wander until they forget they were ever anything else.”

Aura stood, her legs screaming after three days of kneeling, while a thought echoed in her mind: Elara. She had always found strength in the resonance of that name, its quiet connection to something vast and unknown. Elara was more than a name; it was a guiding star, a reminder of resilience she aspired to emulate, yet she knew it belonged to someone else, an ancestor or a myth. "You found your way out."

“I never left.” The woman’s smile widened. “I’m the Threshold Keeper. I exist in the Between. I watch the lost ones drift past, and I make sure they stay lost.” Her gaze seemed to momentarily soften, as if recalling a time before she held such a post, or perhaps a fragment of a life where she had loved and been loved in return.

“Why?”

Because the Between must remain separate. If the lost ones find their way out, the Keeper is said to believe that they might bring the Between with them, causing reality to unravel. Time may fracture, and the living and dead worlds could bleed together until there's nothing but mist and forgetting. Long ago, it is whispered among few that the first mortals might have accidentally opened a door to the Between, discovering that the boundaries between life and death are fragile, requiring eternal vigilance. Only a few know this whispered truth, meant to be a secret carried through generations of Keepers. Your brother is lost. Be grateful that, for now, he's only taking himself into oblivion.

Aura’s hand moved to the iron knife at her belt—the ritual blade, meant to cut the thread if the vigil failed. “Let me find him.”

“No.”

“Then kill me. Because I’m not leaving without him.”

The Threshold Keeper studied her for a long moment. The mist swirled between them, forming shapes—faces, hands, reaching. Pleading.

“You would trade yourself for him?” the woman asked softly.

“Yes.”

“Even knowing you might wander forever? Even knowing you might forget your own name, your own face, everything you ever were?”

Elara thought of Finn. Seven years old when their parents died. Twelve when he learned to sword fight with sticks in the yard. Sixteen when he made her laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe. Twenty when the fever took him, burning through his body in three days while she held his hand and begged gods she didn’t believe in to spare him.

“Yes,” she said again.

The Threshold Keeper’s expression shifted—something ancient and sad moving behind her eyes. “Then you’re already lost, girl. The Between doesn’t take bodies. It takes certainty. Purpose. The knowledge of who you are and where you belong.” She stepped closer. “You’ve been kneeling here for three days, but you stopped belonging to the living world the moment your brother died. You’re already in the Between. You just didn’t know it.”

The mist pressed closer. Aura looked down at her hands and saw them translucent, fading at the edges.

“No,” she whispered.

“The vigil is a test,” the Keeper continued. “Three days to prove you can let go. Three days to choose life over death, the living world over the Between. But you didn’t choose, did you? You held on. You’re still holding on.”

Aura’s knees buckled. She caught herself against the Crossing Stone, her hand passing through it like smoke.

“I can offer you a choice,” the Keeper said. “Release your brother. Let him drift. Accept that he’s gone. Do that, and I can send you back. You’ll wake at the Crossing Stone, solid and alive, with three days of grief behind you.”

“Or?”

“Or keep holding on. Enter the Between fully. Search for him in the endless mist. Maybe you’ll find him. Maybe you’ll wander forever. Maybe you’ll both forget why you’re searching.” The Keeper’s voice softened. “But you’ll be together. In a sense.”

The mist showed Aura images: Finn as a child, laughing. Finn teaching her to skip stones. Finn’s face going slack as the fever won.

“How long do I have to decide?” Aura asked.

The Keeper smiled sadly. "You're in the Between, child. Time doesn't exist here. You have forever. You have no time at all. You've already been deciding for three days, and you've been deciding for three seconds, and you'll be deciding until you forget what a decision is."

Aura felt the weight of the words pressing on her. Conflicting thoughts battled in her mind, each demanding to be heard. A part of her recoiled, vividly replaying Finn's laughter, the warmth of his hand in hers, and their shared dreams, fleeting yet vibrant. But doubt clawed at her resolve—the very path she clung to seemed more like a prison than a promise. Another whisper spoke of duty, of a life half-remembered where the living world beckoned her back, though its contours were hazy and uncertain. It was a choice between memory and possibility, both seductive and terrifying. Her heart ached as she considered the depth of letting go; would she become a shadow of herself in doing so? Yet the suffocating fog of eternity loomed, cold and relentless in its embrace. She questioned if strength lay in acceptance, a surrender she feared, or if her determination to hold on marked her true path. Every thought tumbled over the next, a vortex of uncertainty leaving indelible marks on her soul, as if she were already part of the mist she feared to join.

Aura closed her eyes. She felt herself dissolving, becoming mist, becoming Between. She felt Finn somewhere in the endless gray, lost and searching.

She felt the choice splitting her in two.

When she opened her eyes, the Threshold Keeper was gone. The mist remained. And somewhere in its depths, she heard a voice—familiar, desperate, calling her name.

Aura took a step forward. Then another.

The Crossing Stone vanished behind her, and the mist swallowed everything.