Much to my dismay, it was Lyra who got stuck showing Cayos around.
As I crossed the courtyard, I spotted them standing beneath one of the campus security cameras. She gestured toward the old memorial arch, probably giving her usual tour spiel.
Then he said something. She laughed.
What the hell was so funny?
"Hey dude, its time to go."
My friend pulled me along.
I looked back once again, only to see him pull out his phone, and say something that made her smile.
Cayos was going to be in my class. I wondered what Anya would think of him. I shuddered at the thought.
I sat at my usual spot in the back corner of the class, furthest from the door, next to the window.
Anya's seat lay empty in front of me.
Without thinking, my fingers drifted to my wallet, brushing the worn photo tucked behind my ID. I didn't need to look at it. Just knowing it was there was enough.
Its edges were starting to fray, like everything else these days.
"Halden remains the only Accord-aligned city to maintain a perfect reintegration record post-War. No slums. No conflict. A model for the world..."
The teacher's voice blurred into background noise.
I wasn't listening.
Not really.
Outside, the rain had started again, soft against the high windows. It made the room feel further away, like I was underwater. Or dreaming.
And then I was.
—
Second year. After school. Back when we took the long way home just to walk beside each other.
She found me behind the gym steps, shirt torn, elbow bleeding.
I told her I tripped. She didn't ask again.
She knelt in front of me, brow furrowed, pulling a first aid tin from her pencil case.
"Hold still," she said, voice low. Her hands smelled like lemons, like that soap she always carried.
"It's fine," I muttered, flinching when the antiseptic stung.
She looked up, eyes sharp. "You really need to stop playing hero."
"I wasn't-"
She gave me that look. The one that said: don't lie to me.
The wind stirred her hair. A strand brushed my cheek.
"I told you," I said, trying to sound casual. But something cracked in my voice. "If anyone talks like that to you again, I'll-"
"You'll what?" she said, tilting her head. "Bleed on them?"
I looked away.
She smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. There was something sad behind it. Something she never said out loud.
I didn't want her to see me like that, bruised, small, pathetic. But she just kept cleaning the wound, like it mattered.
"Stop getting hurt for me," she said.
"I'll keep you safe," I told her.
It came out too fast. Too serious.
She blinked.
"You don't have to," she said softly. "I don't want that kind of promise."
"But I-"
She pressed the bandage down, and her hand rested on mine.
"I don't need someone to bleed for me," she said. "Just... don't get lost trying to save me."
I didn't understand why she said that. But it's what I remembered most.
Not her smile. Not the rain that started again as we stood.
Just the weight of her hand. And those words.
Don't get lost trying to save me.
—
"Dio?"
My head jerked up.
The teacher was staring. So was half the class.
"The year?"
"…Nineteen forty-five," I said, guessing.
"Wrong war," he muttered, turning back to the board.
I glanced at the clock.
Still half and hour left.
And then...
The meadow.
I felt my heart twist.
She hadn't disappeared. Not yet. But something had changed.
And I wasn't sure I was ready to find out what.
The rest of the lesson passed in a blur. When the bell finally rang, I moved on instinct, gathering my things, waiting by the door. My fingers itched to check my messages again. Still nothing new.
—
"Hey," Lyra caught up beside me, sliding her bag over one shoulder. "President Hale wants us to help finalise next week's announcements. I'll be stuck here a while."
She rolled her eyes dramatically, mimicking the tone all legacies used. "You're spared. Go do something actually worthwhile with your freedom."
I just nodded, not paying attention.
"Hey, dumbass," she added, softer this time, "if you miss Anya that much, just go see her. I'm sure she'd want to see you too."
I blinked. Not sure how to respond.
She shrugged like it was nothing. Like it hadn't hit a nerve.
"You sure you'll be fine?" I asked.
She gave me a look. "I've survived worse than being left alone in a room with him."
I didn't like it, but I didn't press. "I'll circle back for you later."
She offered a small smile, then gave my arm a light push. "Don't get rained on."
Lyra put her headphones in as she turned.
I tossed my blazer into the trunk and pulled on my old gym hoodie over the school shirt. I didn't need my jacket getting muddy on the first day of the semester. It felt familiar. Safe.
It was going to be a long trek to the meadow.
—
Outside, the storm had passed, but the world still felt grey and heavy, the ground damp with puddles mirroring the sky. The clouds thinned overhead, sunlight threatening but never quite breaking through.
I walked alone.
Taking the long path, I cut behind the old fencing and down moss-worn stairs that led to the hill's edge. The trail was nearly lost, a soft indentation through overgrown green. Still, I followed it, boots damp, hood pulled low. My heart thudded too loud in my ears.
The meadow opened ahead: quiet, washed clean.
Wildflowers shimmered under the last drops of rain. Grass bowed gently in the breeze. Mist drifted like breath over the soil, and in the distance, light fractured across the sky in a half-faded rainbow, soft and pale.
I passed the tree where we shared our first kiss. The bench where I'd first asked her to be my girlfriend.
Just a little further now, to our secret clearing in the hills beside the meadow.
From that hill, the clearing exposed the whole city, gleaming towers at its core, and rows of neat, manufactured suburbia at the edges. Highways unfurled from its borders like forgotten promises. No one ever left. Everything we needed was either already here or on its way to Halden.
And above it all, towering on the horizon where no building should stand, was the Citadel of Mirrors.
It hovered like a mirage. Impossibly distant, impossibly tall. Its surface rippled faintly, not from wind but something deeper.
A shimmer pulsed across one mirrored panel, then vanished.
I blinked.
Gone.
The Citadel remained.
I turned away, throat tight, eyes falling to the large rock at the centre of the clearing. We had sat there one Valentine's Day after she gave me chocolate. Rare after the war, a luxury only for the richest. How she got it, I never knew. We split it in half, savouring the sweetness, sitting side by side, taking in the view in silence as the wind whispered through the grass.
Afterward, I took the golden wrapper, folded and twisted it into a ring. Not much, but enough.
I slipped it onto her finger and promised, even if only in my mind, that I'd stay by her side forever. No matter what came.
No matter what it cost.
That silent vow clung to me then, and it never really left.
The cluster of forget-me-nots she always claimed she hadn't planted now surrounded the rock like a quiet testament.
She wasn't here yet.
So I waited.
—
The rainbow faded. The Citadel shimmered once more.
Then, finally, stilled.
Behind me, I heard footsteps in the wet mud. Soft, slow. I already knew it was Anya.
But I couldn't turn around. Not yet.
Because some part of me was terrified of what I might see.