Before the vision, the lotus pulsed.
The lotus didn't glow.
It pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then the apartment exploded with golden light.
Heat struck my face. Jasmine and incense vanished beneath smoke, dirt, and something metallic that twisted my stomach. I stumbled backward.
“What's happening?”
Grandma Dara grabbed the table.
“Don't touch the pendant.”
Too late.
The floor disappeared.
I landed in dust, palms scraping the ground.
A twelve-year-old girl stood before me. Grandma.
Her black hair hung loose around her face, tears streaking the dust on her cheeks. Behind her stood Kiri's family.
Her parents were gone.
I knew this story. I'd heard it my entire life. But seeing it gave the loss a face: a child trying not to break in front of everyone.
Young Dara looked toward the road. She could leave.
Instead, she turned toward Kiri and took his hand.
The vision shattered.
Back in the apartment, I slammed into the floor, lungs dragging in air that tasted like ash.
The front door clicked shut. The deadbolt turned. The back door and windows slammed closed.
Neak Mean rushed toward one.
“It won't open.”
We were trapped.
My first thought was my family: my brother, my sister, my cousins. I was always the youngest, the one everyone pulled behind them. I'd mistaken their protection for proof I was helpless. Now, with danger closing in, I wondered what would happen if I couldn't protect them back.
A heavy impact struck the front door. The frame jumped. A second blow slammed into the wood, and the hinges groaned.
Grandma looked at me.
“Stay together.”
Before the next vision, the lotus pulsed again.
The apartment vanished.
A train whistle screamed through darkness. Metal shrieked. Smoke burned my throat.
Vireak lay beside the tracks.
Grandma pressed both hands against his chest.
“Please!”
Nothing happened.
She kept moving even after hope left her face, refusing to let the world take him without a fight.
The vision shattered.
Back in the apartment, I returned choking as a metallic screech tore through the building. The floor bucked. A bookshelf toppled, and Neak Mean shoved Nimol clear before it crashed.
“Everybody move!”
A pipe burst overhead. Water sprayed across the room. The wall buckled, and I caught Vannak before he slipped.
“Don't let go.”
Before the next vision, the lotus flashed again.
Hunger swallowed the room.
Dirt. Heat. A nearly empty bowl.
Sreyneang pushed food toward a younger child.
“Eat.”
Grandma grabbed her hand.
“You need it.”
Sreyneang shook her head.
“Take care of them.”
She smiled, then collapsed.
The vision vanished.
Back in the apartment, I came back gasping. The smell of rice filled the apartment, but the pot on the stove held black liquid bubbling over the edge. Nobody had put it there.
Vannak stepped forward. Grandma caught him.
“Don't.”
Where the liquid touched the floor, wood hissed and smoked. Thick streams crawled toward us.
Neak Mean shoved a chair against the kitchen entrance.
“Back!”
I threw a cushion toward the hallway, drawing the black liquid away from Vannak's feet. It hissed across the fabric.
“Move!” Neak Mean shouted.
We ran.
Before the next vision, the lotus flashed.
Dust. Sun. Thousands of frightened people.
The road to Thailand.
Grandma ran beside the missionary.
“Keep moving!”
He pointed toward the border.
“We're almost there!”
Grandma stopped.
“My children are still behind us.”
“We can't go back.”
“Turn around.”
“Dara, it's too dangerous!”
She grabbed his sleeve.
“Bring them to me.”
The vision exploded into darkness.
Back in the apartment—
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Someone pounded on our apartment door.
“Help!”
A woman's voice cried from the hallway.
“Please! Open the door!”
Neak Mean looked at Grandma.
“She needs help.”
Grandma didn't move.
The pounding became frantic.
I looked at the door, then at my family.
This was her choice.
Now it was ours.
I wanted Grandma to make the danger simple: open the door and be good, or keep it closed and survive. But everyone was looking at her, and I knew she couldn't choose for us.
My hand closed around the lotus. I moved in front of Vannak and slid the coffee table against the door, buying us another barrier without opening it.
The pounding stopped.
Silence.
A shadow passed beneath the door. Something scratched slowly across the other side.
Neak Mean stepped backward.
Grandma whispered, “The lotus showed you the danger before you opened the door.”
The scratching stopped.
Then the lotus burned brighter.
Before the final vision, the lotus flared.
The final vision hit.
Brooklyn. Our building. Our family, older.
Vannak ran ahead of me, then fell.
“Vannak!”
Neak Mean turned around.
Nimol grabbed his shirt.
“Don't go back!”
“He's hurt!”
“Neak, no!”
Something crawled across the ceiling behind Vannak.
Neak Mean pulled free and ran toward his brother.
The creature lunged.
The vision shattered.
Back in the apartment, I screamed.
The apartment lights died.
That was me, older, watching Vannak fall and Neak Mean turn back. But what had I done? Had I kept running, gone back, saved Vannak, saved Neak Mean, or frozen while someone I loved disappeared?
The vision left one certainty: there would be a moment when love demanded an answer, and hesitation would become its own choice.
“Stay together!” Grandma shouted.
Something slammed into the front door. The wood cracked, and a splintered section burst inward.
Everyone formed the Boran pattern: Neak Mean and Nimol forward, Vichea at the side, Vannak and me behind them, Grandma at the center with the lotus illuminating her face.
The door split.
A dark hand punched through the gap, followed by a creature that unfolded from the darkness in impossible pieces: a crooked shoulder, fingers too long for any human hand, and a head that shifted whenever the lotus flashed. Its skin rippled like smoke beneath glass.
It lunged toward Neak Mean.
He met it head-on, driving his forearm across its throat. The impact hurled him into the wall, but he kept its attention away from the rest of us.
“Neak!”
The Hollowkin clamped onto his shoulder and dragged him toward the broken doorway. Nimol hooked her arm around my waist, Vichea seized Nimol's belt, and Vannak locked the chain around her wrist.
The Hollowkin pulled.
For one terrible second, I waited for someone older, stronger, or more certain to tell me what to do.
No one did.
I wrapped both hands around Neak Mean's wrist and planted one foot against the doorframe.
“Vannak!” I shouted. “The floor!”
Golden markings began to glow beneath our feet.
“Keep it there!” Grandma called. “Don't break the circle!”
Vannak dragged the rug beneath the Hollowkin's feet. Its heel crossed the first line, and smoke rose from its skin.
It shrieked and jerked backward.
Neak Mean twisted free and struck its ribs. Nimol swept its knee. Vichea drove it onto the markings.
The lotus burned brighter.
Golden lines spread across the floor, locking the Hollowkin inside the pattern Grandma had taught us during Boran training.
Grandma raised the lotus.
“You have to decide who you refuse to leave behind.”
The Hollowkin lunged again. I stepped between it and Vannak.
“Neak, drive it left!”
He struck its chest, forcing it across the circle. Nimol swept its legs out from under it, and Vichea pinned it over the brightest markings. Vannak pulled me clear of its claws, but its hand snapped toward him.
I grabbed Vannak's hand before it could close.
Grandma thrust the lotus forward.
“Together!”
Golden light exploded through the apartment. The markings flared beneath the Hollowkin, revealing black tendons and pale fingers twisting inside its smoke-thin body. The circle locked around its limbs.
We pulled.
The Hollowkin tore apart in a burst of ash and wet, metallic heat. Its scream collapsed into a hiss, and the remaining darkness was dragged through the broken doorway by the golden light.
Then it was gone.
Silence returned.
Neak Mean sagged against the wall. Nimol's knees buckled, and Vichea caught her. Vannak still gripped my hand so tightly his fingers had gone white.
We had not defeated the Hollowkin because one of us was strong enough.
We had done it together.
And Grandma had given us the light.
My hands shook as she approached and placed the lotus in my palm. It was warm, almost alive.
“Why me?” I whispered.
Grandma looked at the pendant.
“Because you kept asking why.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the lotus has been waiting for you to stop watching our history…”
She closed my fingers around it.
“…and start becoming part of it.”
Outside, another scream echoed through Brooklyn.
The lotus pulsed against my palm.
This time, I felt something different.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Whatever had come for our family wasn't finished.
And neither was I.
Then, from somewhere beyond the broken door, something whispered my name.
Not the name everyone called me.
The other one.
The name etched inside the lotus pendant, hidden beneath a smear of something dark and dried. A name Grandma had never spoken aloud—not because she had forgotten it, but because the lotus had remembered it for her.
The lotus went cold.
Behind me, Grandma made a sound I had never heard from her before—a small, broken gasp.
Her eyes fixed on the pendant, not the doorway.
“That name belonged to the first child the lotus failed to protect,” she whispered. “The first child it chose—and lost.”
Her fingers tightened around my wrist.
“The child who opened the way for the Hollowkin.”
The whisper came again, closer this time, from the darkness beyond the doorway.
It shaped the hidden name with terrible care, each syllable pressed through the dark like a finger against a bruise.
Grandma seized my wrist hard enough to hurt.
“Don't answer it.”
Her voice broke on the warning. Not fear alone—recognition. She knew what waited beyond that name. She knew the Hollowkin had not come only to kill us. It had come because the first child had left something behind, and the lotus had carried that unfinished claim through our blood.
The darkness outside breathed.
Then it whispered the name a third time, no longer from the hallway.
It came from inside the apartment.
From behind me.
Grandma pulled me against her and covered my mouth with one trembling hand.
“Whatever you hear,” she whispered into my hair, “do not say who you are.”
The lotus remained cold in my palm.
Something touched the back of my neck.
I felt its breath before I heard the whisper.
It spoke the hidden name directly into my ear.
And Grandma's hand clamped tighter over my mouth as the thing behind me began to smile