Vivian's breath hitched as the words settled into her bones like a prophecy already fulfilled.
"You promised you'd remember."
The woman's voice wove through the cold air, carrying an ache that pressed against Vivian's chest like a weight she hadn't realized she had been carrying all along.
Memories—fractured, half-formed, and blurred by time—began clawing their way back to the surface.
The clearing.The moonlight.The promise.
Her fingers dug into the damp earth beneath her, grounding her against the whirlwind unraveling in her mind.
"I…" Her voice was barely a whisper. "I don't understand."
The man behind the woman exhaled sharply, his stance rigid, his expression unreadable. "No," he said, his voice rough. "You just don't want to."
Sebastian groaned somewhere to her left. She turned sharply, realizing he had fallen with her, his hand pressed against his temple as if something was trying to split his mind open.
"Elara?" Vivian's voice wavered as she looked around, but there was no sign of the other woman. Only her, Sebastian, and the two figures standing before them in this place that was both old and forgotten.
She swallowed hard and turned back to them. "Who are you?"
The woman's dark eyes softened, though sorrow lingered beneath their depths. "You already know, Vivian."
A name—on the tip of her tongue. A name that felt like it belonged to this woman, to this night, to the past she had tried so desperately to leave behind.
But before she could say it—
A sound.
A whisper in the trees, low and distant. The wind carried it, curling around them like unseen fingers grasping for something lost.
Sebastian's breathing grew shallow. "We shouldn't be here."
The man turned to him, eyes dark and knowing. "But you are."
Vivian clenched her fists. "Enough riddles. Just tell us."
The woman inhaled deeply before speaking, her voice carrying the weight of something old.
"We were you."
The words sent a chill through her veins.
"What?" she breathed.
"We were you, Vivian. And you were us." The woman's expression didn't shift, as if she had accepted this truth long ago. "Over and over again."
Vivian shook her head. "That doesn't make sense."
The man took a step closer. "It will."
A sudden pulse rippled through the clearing. The trees swayed, the ground trembled, and for a brief moment, the world itself seemed to bend.
Then—
Flashes.
A memory, but not her own.
A woman standing where Vivian stood now, bathed in moonlight, clutching a dagger to her chest. Her face was familiar, but not quite the same. Her eyes held the same fear, the same desperation.
A man beside her—different, yet eerily similar to Sebastian—his hand reaching for her, just as Sebastian had reached for Vivian countless times before.
A promise made under the stars.
A betrayal.
A curse, spoken into the wind, binding them all to this endless cycle.
Vivian gasped, stumbling back, her breath ragged. The clearing spun around her, her mind threatening to shatter beneath the weight of it all.
"This… this isn't real."
But it was.
She looked back at the woman and the man, her stomach twisting.
They weren't just ghosts.
They were echoes.
Reflections of a life she had already lived. Of a story doomed to repeat itself.
And now, the pieces were finally falling into place.
Sebastian's voice broke through the chaos. "Vivian—"
She turned to him, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Because she knew now.
She remembered.
And she was terrified.
To be continued...