Dec. 7, 2025

A Christmas Paranormal Romantic Thriller - Twelve Nights (Episode 2 of 4) - "The Man Who Remembers"

A Christmas Paranormal Romantic Thriller - Twelve Nights (Episode 2 of 4) - "The Man Who Remembers"

Forty-seven loops in, Sloane has developed a desperate system: writing notes on her skin, hoping fragments survive the reset. Tonight, more memories stick than ever before—and she arrives at the gas station early, ready for answers.Elias finally reveals the truth. He's a debt-walker, bound for nearly two centuries to an ancient entity called the Solstice Collector. When he found Sloane dying on Christmas Eve, he broke every rule to save her—and trapped them both in an endless loop instead.But something is changing. Sloane is remembering more. And in the moment before impact, she glimpses the Collector itself.

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Caloroga Shark Media.

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Hello and welcome to twelve Nights, a Christmas paranormal romance thriller.

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This is episode two, The man who remembers.

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I've died forty seven times. I know this because I've

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started leaving myself notes. Not on my phone that resets

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with everything else, A cruel joke that took me six

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loops to figure out. Not on paper. Either paper burns

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in the crash, it's lost in the reset, or simply

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isn't there. When I wake up, gasping at my desk

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at eleven PM number one, I leave myself notes. The

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only way that works, I write on my body. The

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first time I tried it, I used a sharpie from

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Marcy's desk scrawled gas station you die at eleven fifty

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two on my forearm in frantic capital letters. When I

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woke up after the crash, the words were gone, fresh skin, unmarked,

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like it never happened. But I remembered writing them. That

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was Loup nineteen, the first time I remembered anything. By

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loop twenty three, i'd figured out the pattern. The marks disappear,

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but something stays a shadow of memory, faint as a

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dream you can't quite hold on to. The more I write,

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the more I focus on the words as I'm writing them,

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the stronger the shadow gets. So now I have a

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ritual every loop. As soon as I realize where I am,

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I go to the bathroom and I write.

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I use the.

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Emergency sharpie I've started keeping in my coat pocket, which

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also resets, but I've memorized which draw MARSI keeps hers in.

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I write everything I know on my skin, my arms,

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my thighs, anywhere the words will fit, and every loop

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I remember a little more. Tonight, I didn't even wait

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for Marsy to corner me about leaving early. I grabbed

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my coat, muttered something about a headache, and locked myself

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in the third floor bathroom with a black marker and

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a desperate need to understand what the hell was happening

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to me. Loop forty seven Elias, gas Station, eleven forty seven,

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Debt Walker, Solstice, Collector, you die at eleven fifty two,

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black eyes, smile, marker forty seven. He remembers everything. I

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stared at the words on my forearm, willing them to

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make sense. Some of them I recognized Elias, the gas station,

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the ice, but Debt Walker, Solstice collector. Those were new

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or old, or something I'd learned in a loop I

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couldn't fully remember. The bathroom door opened and I yanked

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my sleeve down. Sloane Marcy's voice concerned you. Okay, you

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ran out of their pretty fast? Fine, I said, too quickly,

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just needed a minute. She gave me the look she

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always gives me, the one that says she knows I'm

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not fine, but she's too polite to push O. K Well,

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Merry Christmas, don't be a stranger. Merry Christmas, Marcy, the

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parking garage, the frosted windshield, the empty highway. I drove

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through the familiar motions, like following a recipe i'd made

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a hundred times, which I guess I had forty seven times,

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at least probably more. There were loops I couldn't remember

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at all, just vague impressions of fear and cold and

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a voice saying my name. The gas station appeared at

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eleven forty six. I didn't hesitate. Elias was waiting in

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his usual spot, just outside the circle of light, but

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this time, when I got out of the car, something

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was different. He was looking at me with an expression

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I hadn't seen before. Hope maybe or disbelief. You came early,

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he said, I remembered the hope in his eyes flickered brighter.

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How much enough? I pushed up my sleeve, showed him

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the words scrawled across my skin. I've been leaving myself notes.

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It's not perfect, but pieces are starting to stick. I

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remember you telling me about the loops. I remember dying.

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I remember I pause, reaching for a memory that felt

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like smoke. You said, you're the reason I'm trapped here.

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What did you mean? Elias was quiet for a long moment.

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Behind us, a truck rumbled past on the highway, its

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headlights cutting through the dark. How much time do we have?

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I checked my phone. Five minutes, maybe six if I

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take the curve slower. You can't take the curve slower.

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I've tried the loop A justs other cars appear, or

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the ice spreads, or he shook his head. It doesn't matter.

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Five minutes isn't enough? Then talk fast, he almost smiled. Almost.

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I'm a debt walker, he said. I work for something

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called the Solstice Collector, an entity old older than Christmas,

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older than most human civilizations. It exists in the spaces

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between moments. The pause between one heartbeat and the next,

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the held breath before midnight strikes. I should have thought

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he was crazy. I'd died forty seven times in the

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past forty seven nights. Crazy had lost its meaning. What

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does it collect? Time? Specifically time debt, Moments that should

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have ended but didn't, lives that should have stopped but

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kept going. His voice was steady, but I could hear

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the weight underneath. When someone cheats death really cheats. It

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not just a near miss, but a genuine violation of

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the natural order. The collector comes to balance the books,

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and people like me we facilitate the transaction, people like you.

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I died in eighteen forty seven cholera. I was twenty

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nine years old, and I wasn't ready, And when the

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collector offered me a deal, I took it. He looked

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at me, and for a moment I saw all those

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years in his eyes, the weight of nearly two centuries

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carried alone. I've been walking between moments ever since, finding

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the debts, collecting what's owed. The cold was seeping through

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my coat, but I barely felt it, and me, what's

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my debt? Elias looked away. You don't have one. You

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died fairly, the ice, the crash. It was just bad luck.

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No debt to collect, no balance to restore. He paused.

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But I was there at mile mark of forty seven

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on Christmas Eve, three hundred and sixty four loops ago,

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I was passing through felt the moment happen, arrived just

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as your car hit the guardrail, and you were still alive,

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barely thirty seconds maybe less. And you looked at me, Sloane.

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You looked right at me, and you said, and his

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voice cracked, You said, I don't want to die alone.

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Something twisted in my chest, a memory I couldn't quite reach.

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So I made a deal, Elias continued. I went to

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the collector and I offered it everything I had, centuries

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of service, every debt i'd ever collected, my entire existence,

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to bring you back, to give you more time. But

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it didn't work. It worked too well, he laughed. But

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there was no humor in it. The collector doesn't give

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it trades. I asked for more time, and it gave

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you all the time the same night, repeating forever you live,

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you die, you live again, an endless loop of Christmas Eve,

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and you remember all of it, every single loop, every conversation.

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Every time you look at me like a stranger, because

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you've forgotten everything we can He stopped, swallowed. The collector

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feeds on temporal energy. The loop generates it endlessly. As

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long as you're trapped here, dying and resetting. It has

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an infinite power source, and I have to watch. I

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stared at him, this man, this impossible, centuries old man

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who had damned us both because I didn't want to

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die alone. Why didn't you just let me go? I

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don't know? His voice was barely a whisper. I'd collected

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thousands of deaths by then, watched people beg, plead, bargain.

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I never intervened, not once.

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But you.

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He shook his head. Something about you, Sloane, something that

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made me break every rule I'd followed for a hundred

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and seventy years. My phone buzzed eleven fifty one. I

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have to go, I said, and I hated that it

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was true. Hated that, even now, knowing everything, I could

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feel the pull of the loop dragging me back toward

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the highway. I know, but I'm remembering more. Every loop

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a little more sticks. That has to mean something, right.

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Elias looked at me and beneath the grief. I saw

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it again, that flicker of hope he couldn't quite extinguish

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in three hundred and sixty four loops. You've never remembered

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this much. You've never come to the gas station early.

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You've never He reached out, almost touched my hand, then

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pulled back. Something's changing. I don't know what, but something's changing.

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I wanted to stay, wanted to ask more questions, understand

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more of this impossible situation, understand more of him. But

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the loop was pulling, and my feet were already moving

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toward the car. Same time tomorrow, I asked. It came

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out almost like a joke. Elia smiled, a real smile,

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this time small and sad and beautiful. Same time tomorrow,

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and the day after and the day after that. He paused,

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I'll be here, Sloane. However long it takes, I'll be here.

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I got in the car, pulled onto the highway, watched

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mile marker forty seven approach in my headlights. But this time,

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just before the ice took my tires, I saw something else.

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A figure standing on the side of the road, just

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past the guard rail, tall, thin, wrong, somehow, proportions that

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didn't quite match anything human and cold, even through the glass,

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Even in the split second before impact, I felt cold

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radiating off it, like heat from a furnace in reverse.

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It turned to look at me and I saw its face. No,

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not a face, a void, an absence where a face

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should be, darker than the night around it, pulling at

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something inside my chest, like gravity, like hunger, like the guardrail,

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the spin, the crunch of metal, and then nothing. The

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office Christmas party ended at eleven. I was standing by

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my desk, coat in hand, gasping like I'd just been

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under water. My skin was clean, unmarked, but the memories

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were stronger than ever. Elias, the debt, the deal he'd made,

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and something else, something new, a face that wasn't a face,

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a cold that went deeper than winter, the Solstice Collector.

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I grabbed Marcy's sharpie and ran to the bathroom. A

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lot to write down.