Dec. 21, 2025

A Christmas Paranormal Romantic Thriller - Twelve Nights Episode 4 of 4 - "Christmas Morning"

A Christmas Paranormal Romantic Thriller - Twelve Nights Episode 4 of 4 - "Christmas Morning"

Loop ninety. Sloane remembers everything—and she's done playing by the Collector's rules.Instead of meeting Elias at the gas station, she goes directly to mile marker 47, where the loop closes. Using her threshold sight, she finally sees the truth: the debt binding them isn't one-sided. It can be balanced.When the Collector arrives to stop her, Sloane makes her choice—not to die, not to serve, but to bind herself to Elias as completely as he bound himself to her. Equal sacrifice. Mutual love. A debt that owes itself.The loop shatters. And for the first time, Sloane sees Christmas morning.

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Calorouga Shark Media.

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

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This is episode four. Christmas Morning, Luke ninety.

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I remember everything, every death, every conversation, every almost touch

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in a frozen gas station parking lot, the way Elias's

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voice sounds when he says my name, hopeful and heartbroken

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the same time, like a man who's learned that hope

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is just another kind of hurt. I remember the collector's offer,

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the choice it wanted me to make. And I remember

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the thread I saw in the moment before impact, gossamer,

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thin and glowing, stretching between my heart and his. Tonight,

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I'm not going to the gas station tonight. I'm going

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to mile marker forty seven. The party is the same

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as always, Marcy's blinking sweater, Dave's spiked eggnog, the ice

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sculpture melting slowly toward the shrimp. I grab my coat

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and slip out before anyone can stop me, my heart

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pounding with something that feels almost like hope. The highway

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is empty Christmas Eve, nearly midnight, everyone else already where

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they're supposed to be. I drive past the gas station

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without stopping. I can almost feel Elias's confusion from here,

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his centuries of routine rupted by my absence. But I

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can't explain yet. I need to see it first, need

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to understand. Mile marker forty seven appears in my headlights

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at eleven forty nine. I pull over to the shoulder,

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fifty feet before the curve. The guardrail gleams dully in

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the darkness, and I can see the patch of black

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ice ahead, waiting for me like it's waited ninety times before,

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patient inevitable. Except nothing is inevitable, not anymore. I get

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out of the car. The cold hits me immediately, sharper

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than it should be, and I know the collector is watching.

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It's always watching. Here at the place where the loop closes,

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where my death feeds its endless hunger, I close my

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eyes and reach from my threshold sight. The world shifts.

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In the space between moments. Mile marker forty seven is

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a wound. I can see the accumulated trauma of ninety

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deaths layered on top of each other, each one leaving

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its mark on the fabric of time. Blood and metal

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and broken glass playing on an endless loop just beneath

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the surface of reality and running through all of it,

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thin as spider silk, bright as starlight. The thread, it's

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not just connecting me to Elias. It's connecting me to

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the loop itself, to the moment he made his bargain,

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his blood and desperation crystallized into something the collector could hold.

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The thread is the debt, and the debt is what

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keeps me trapped. But here's what the collector didn't tell me.

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The thread goes both ways. Elias bound himself to me

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when he made his deal. His existence tied to my loop,

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his hope tied to my survival, his heart tied to mine.

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Across hundreds of nights I couldn't remember. He gave everything

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to save me, and now I'm going to give everything

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to save him. Sloane. I opened my eyes. Elias was

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standing at the edge of the road, having walked here

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from the gas station. His face was pale, confused, afraid.

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What are you doing? Why didn't you? I needed to

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see it, I said, the loop, the debt. I needed

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to understand how it works, and do you? I think? So?

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I walked toward him, my feet crunching on the frozen gravel.

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The collector said the only way to break the bond

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was to choose death, to stand at the threshold and

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willingly step through. But it was lying, or at least

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it wasn't telling the whole truth. What do you mean

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The debt isn't just yours, Elias, it's ours. You gave

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everything to save me, but I never gave anything back.

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The bond is on balanced, That's what the collector feeds on,

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not death, not time. Imbalance, one person owing another, one

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person sacrificing while the other just receives. Elias shook his head.

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You didn't ask me to save you. You don't owe

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me anything. That's not how it works. I reached out

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and took his hand. His skin was cold, always cold,

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the temperature of the space between moments, but I held

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on anyway. I've been thinking about Clara, the woman who

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tried to free you. You said she failed because she

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tried to cut your chains and the collector just bound

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her instead. But what if the problem wasn't her method.

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What if the problem was that she was trying to

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break the bond instead of balance it. I don't understand.

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You gave everything for me, your freedom, your centuries of service,

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your entire existence, the collector holds that debt because I

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never matched it. But what if I did. I squeezed

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his hand. What if I bound myself to you the

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same way you bound yourself to me, not breaking the chain,

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completing it, making the debt equal on both sides. Elias's

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eyes widened. Sloane, that would make you a debt walker.

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You'd be trapped like I am, walking between moments, collecting

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what's owed. No, I shook my head. That's what the

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collector would want, two servants instead of one. But a

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balanced debt isn't a debt at all. It's a bond,

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an exchange, something freely given and freely returned. I stepped

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closer to him, close enough to see my reflection in

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his dark eyes. I'm not going to serve the collector.

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I'm going to bind myself to you, and you're going

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to bind yourself to me, equal and opposite. A closed circuit.

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It can't feed on you. Don't know if that will work, no,

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I admitted, But I know the alternative. I die forever,

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or I serve forever, or I choose to die and

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maybe break free alone without you. I reached up and

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touched his face, and this time he didn't pull away.

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I don't want to be free if it means losing you.

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I didn't want to die alone three hundred and ninety

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loops ago, and I don't want to live alone.

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Now.

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Elias closed his eyes. I could feel him trembling under

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my touch, not from cold, but from something older, deeper,

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a sentry and a half of loneliness cracking open. I've

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loved you for so long, he whispered, across so many loops,

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and every single time I've had to watch you forget me.

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What you look at me like a stranger, what you

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drive away, knowing what was coming, unable to stop it.

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His eyes opened, full of tears. If this doesn't work,

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if we try this and it fails, I'll have to

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watch you die, knowing you loved me back, knowing what

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we could have had. The cold deepened. The collector was coming.

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I could feel it gathering at the edges of my

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threshold sight, a vast and ancient presence, drawing itself together

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like a storm. It had heard us, understood what we

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were planning, and it was not pleased. You cannot balance

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a debt with more debt. The voice came from everywhere,

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shaking the air rattling the guardrail. You are not a

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debt walker. You have no standing to make such a bargain.

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I have threshold sight, I said, turning to face the darkness.

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You said it yourself evolving into something new, something you've

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never seen before. A human with threshold sight is still human,

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still mortal, still bound by the laws of Then let

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me show you something new. I pulled Elias toward me

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and kissed him. It wasn't a gentle kiss. It wasn't tentative,

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or questioning, or any of the soft things a first

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kiss is supposed to be. It was desperate and fierce

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and full of everything I'd learned across ninety loops of dyeing,

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the value of moments, the weight of time, the unbearable

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brightness of connection in the face of oblivion. And as

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I kissed him, I reached for the thread in my

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threshold sight. The gossamer strand between us blazed like a

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live wire. I could see the imbalance, his side, heavy

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with sacrifice, mine light with receiving the collector's grip on

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the debt, feeding on the inequality, holding us both in place.

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I poured myself into the thread, not my death, not

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my service, my choice, my love. Every moment I'd spent

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learning him across fractured time, every fragment of memory, I'd

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fought to keep every version of myself that had looked

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at this impossible man and thought yes him. Whatever the cost,

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I gave it all, freely, completely, a matching weight to

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balance his sacrifice. The thread sang. I felt a leah's

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gasp against my mouth as the balance shifted, felt the

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collector's grip shudder loosen, something fundamental changing in the architecture

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of the loop. The thread wasn't one sided anymore. It

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was a circuit, a bond, two people choosing each other

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across impossible odds, giving equally, receiving equally, a debt that

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owed itself No. The collector's voice was different, now, smaller, confused.

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This is not You cannot watch me, I said. The

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thread completed itself. I don't know how to describe what

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happened next. It was like dying, except instead of darkness,

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there was light, like waking up, except I'd never been asleep.

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The loop shattered around us. I could feel it coming apart,

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ninety iterations of Christmas Eve collapsing into a single moment.

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All that accumulated time, releasing at once, and in the

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center of it all, Elias and I bound together by

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something the collector couldn't touch. When I opened my eyes,

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I was lying on frozen ground. The guardrail was beside me,

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but there was no crash, no blood, no broken glass,

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just cold earth and dark sky and the first pale

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hint of dawn on the horizon. Dawn I'd never seen

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dawn before, not in the loop. The loop ended at midnight,

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resetting before the sun could rise slowne. Elias was beside me,

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his hand still in mine. He was staring at the

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lightning sky with an expression I'd never seen on his face.

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Wonder maybe or disbelief. Is it over? I asked, I

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don't know. His voice was hoarse. I can still feel

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the between spaces, still see the moments underneath moments, but

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the collector, he shook his head. I can't feel it anymore,

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the chain that bound me to it, It's just gone.

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I sat up slowly. My body felt different, heavier and

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lighter at the same time. When I looked at my hands,

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I could see faint traces of light running under my skin,

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like veins made of starlight. The thread internalized part of me.

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Now we're still bound, I said to each other. Yes,

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and we can still see between moments, still walk through time.

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Yes.

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Elias turned to look at me, and there were tears

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on his cheeks. Freezing in the cold air with something new, Sloane,

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something that's never existed before. Two threshold walkers bound by

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choice instead of debt. I don't know what that means.

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I don't know what we are now does it matter?

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He laughed, a real laugh, surprised out of him, rough

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with disuse. No, I suppose it doesn't. I leaned into him,

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and he wrapped his arms around me, and we sat

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there together as the sun rose over mile marker forty

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seven Christmas morning, the first Christmas morning i'd seen in

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what felt like a hundred years. What now, asked, I

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don't know, Elias admitted, I've been bound for so long.

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I don't remember what freedom feels like. There might be consequences,

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other debt walkers, entities like the collector forces that won't

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appreciate what we've done. He pulled me closer. But whatever comes,

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we face it together. That's the deal we made, that's

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the bond together, I agreed. In the distance, church bells

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began to ring Christmas morning, calling the faithful to celebration,

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marking the end of the longest night. I thought about

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all the people waking up to presence and family and warmth,

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never knowing how close the world had come to something

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ancient and hungry. Maybe that was okay, Maybe that was

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the point, ordinary people living ordinary lives, protected by those

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of us who walked in the spaces between. I looked

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at Elias, at this impossible man who had loved me

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across centuries and loops and deaths, who had broken every

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rule he'd ever followed. Because I didn't want to die alone.

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Merry Christmas, I said. He smiled, a real smile, unreserved,

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the kind of smile I'd never seen on his face before.

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Merry Christmas, Sloane, And for the first time in ninety lifetimes,

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I didn't die at midnight. I lived. Thank you for

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listening to Twelve Nights, a Romance weekly holiday series. We

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wish you warmth, connection and someone to share the Longest

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Nights with.