1. Threaded Shadows

Twice Born, book 1 Vanishing Woman, Work in Progress, author Leena Maria

Baggy trousers hung low on my hips. The drawstring kept slipping—I’d been losing weight again. Dark fabric, unremarkable cut. The kind of clothes that let you disappear.

The boots were another story. Victorian-style leather, lace-up, the sort that belonged in a museum. Mine had been resoled three times by a cobbler off Brick Lane who never asked questions. The left heel held a narrow blade. I’d sharpened it last week after the close call in Westminster.

The leather vest came next. Copper plates sewn between the layers—they’d saved my ribs once. The scar still ached when it rained.

Weapons went where they always did. Comb-blade twisted into my braid. Daggers on the belt. Throwing knives strapped to my forearms under a loose shirt I’d had modified—slits along the seams for quick access. The seamstress in Shoreditch thought I was an actress. Method acting, I’d told her. She’d smiled and taken my money.

I’d been sleeping armed for fifteen years.

The brass scarab was last. I pulled it out, checking the crystal in its center. The amber glow barely flickered—twenty percent charge, if I was lucky. Tomorrow I’d have to find a temple grid or risk losing my anchor completely.

My guardian had pressed this into my hand the night she died. “Don’t let them see it,” she’d said, blood bubbling between her lips. “Don’t let them know what you are.”

I was eleven. I hadn’t understood then, but I was old enough to grasp the need for secrecy. Old enough to dress and undress alone, without sisters helping. So the scarab stayed hidden, just as my guardian had wished.

I tucked the scarab back under my shirt and went to the window. Across the street, the vintage shop’s dark window reflected an odd light pattern from below. Thornside Café usually just had security lights on after closing—the ones behind the counter. But tonight there were extra pools of dim light. Table lamps, maybe.

Nearly midnight. Theo sometimes stayed late doing inventory, but this looked different. Shadows moved in the reflection. Not the furtive, quick movements that would have sent me downstairs to check, but casual shifting. Someone moving around openly, unhurried. Whatever was happening down there, it wasn’t a break-in.

I could have gone down to check. Should have, maybe. But the scarab’s weak charge meant I couldn’t waste energy on curiosity. Whatever Theo was doing in his café at midnight was his business.

The half-dead orchid on my windowsill drooped toward the glass. Theo had brought it up last month, grinning. “Thought you could rescue it,” he’d said. The thing was still alive, barely. We had that in common.

My museum badge sat crooked on the dresser. Lyra Thorne, Junior Curator. Such a normal name for such an abnormal life. In a few hours, I’d scan in at the staff entrance and pretend to care about pottery shards.

The birthmark on my lower back warmed. Not painful, just... aware. It always knew when I was about to cross. After all these years, the sensation still made me shiver.

Did anyone else live like this? Stretched between worlds, belonging nowhere?

I sat on the bed’s edge. The city hummed outside—sirens, engines, Saturday night voices floating up from the street. London being London. Indifferent to one more lost woman preparing to fall through reality’s cracks.

I pulled the bone-handled dagger from my belt. The weight steadied me. Old habit from when I was young and didn’t understand what crossed and what didn’t. Everything I wore, everything secured to my body—it all came with me. The weapons, the clothes, the scarab. Even the dirt under my fingernails.

But nothing else. Not the bed, not the pillow, not even dust from the floor.

No prayers. I’d given those up with my guardian’s last breath.

I lay back, boots still on—I’d learned that lesson the hard way. The mattress sagged in its familiar places. The ceiling above was clean white paint with one crack running from corner to center. I’d stared at it a thousand times.

No photos decorated these walls. No one close enough to notice if I vanished for days. Sarah at work might wonder. Theo would assume I was avoiding him again. But no one who’d raise an alarm.

The birthmark pulsed harder. Something tugged deep in my gut—not gentle, not welcoming. More like hooks in flesh, pulling.

The room blurred.

My breath caught. Then stopped.

Then I was falling. Not through dreams or darkness.

Through the space between what is and what shouldn’t be.

Gone.

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