Chapter 20 · Loopbound - Chapter 20: Mom Behind the Gate

The hand pushes through the crack in the gate. Callum sees the dog tag first, silver chain wrapped twice around her wrist. His dad's name stamped into the metal. He wore it his whole childhood, thought she'd taken it when she left.

She didn't leave.

"Callum." Her voice comes through thin, like she's shouting from underwater. "Don't pull me through. Listen first."

Evan's still holding the left side of the gate frame, hands shaking. The summoning circle under them is starting to smoke. Callum can smell burnt copper and something sharper, ozone maybe. The ward pressure in the room keeps spiking, enough that his teeth hurt.

"Mom—"

"I know." Her fingers curl around the edge of the gate. He can see her face now, just barely. Same cheekbones. Same scar through her eyebrow he used to trace when he was four. "I know what you want. You can't have both."

Callum's jaw locks. "You don't know what I want."

"You want me out. You want the school to survive." She shifts, and he sees the rest of her arm. There's a glyph burned into her forearm, old and faded but still active. It pulses in time with the gate.