Alex's pov:
After finishing her coffee, I watched her leave the garden behind.
Her silhouette soft against the morning light as she moved slowly toward the village's heart. The air still smelled of roses, a delicate thread tying her to memories she couldn't name. The morning was too quiet, unnervingly still.
That kind of silence always meant something was waiting just beneath the surface, waiting to break through.
From my hidden place in the shadows, I observed the village awakening. The market stalls creaked open one by one, their wooden frames worn and weathered from years of use. The comforting aroma of fresh bread mingled with pungent spices, spreading warmth through the cobbled streets. It feels so unfair to be able to smell things but without the power to sense them.
Children darted through the square, their bare feet slapping lightly against the stones, laughter bubbling free and unburdened.
Nearby, the elderly sat on doorsteps, their faces lined with time and quiet wisdom, watching the world unfold as if trapped in a moment unchanging for decades.
I passed by wondering if i will ever have the chance to grow like them? To experience the feeling of having my children running in circles around me?
Katherine moved with a kind of quiet grace, but something about her pace was different slower, hesitant, like she was carrying a weight!
She made her way toward the old bookshop, but the hand-written sign hanging across the door told me everything: Closed Today.
I saw the faint sigh she let slip, the subtle disappointment folding into her shoulders as she turned to leave.
Then, from beside the bakery, a voice sliced through the stillness. It was Mary the old psychic lady of the village, or as some called her the crazy wicked lady .
"There's a thread tangled round your heart, one that death didn't cut clean."
She leaned forward voice dropping "Careful… some threads pull back."
Then she sat back, hunched beneath her scarves, which swayed gently in the morning breeze.
She looked straight through Katherine, she looked my way. With those eyes like cracked glass, sharp, unreadable, and ancient. I think this lady can actually see the unseen.
"You carry something old. Child, Something not of this life," the woman said. Her tone soft but heavy with meaning.
Katherine smiled politely, "Good morning to you too, aunt mary, here's some lavender pen i hope you enjoy it."
The old woman accepted it with a reverence that sent a chill through me, her fingers curling protectively around the gift as though it was a talisman against unseen forces.
Katherine said as she walked away: "And I'm carrying nothing, you probably need to go home aunt Mary."
But the minute she turned around, no one was there.
I saw the shiver crawl up Katherine's arms.
She tried to deny it, probably thinking that aunt Mary is crone who always speaks nonsense, and always show up and disappear like a phantom.
But I was there. Just out of sight, breathing with the wind, a shadow cast by a past she'd forgotten.
Then Jade appeared. Her childhood friend, the one always too close, too eager, He strode toward her with easy confidence, tall and sunlit, carrying a crate of oranges and that same laugh that filled silence too easily.
I clenched my fists in frustration, jealousy waking up inside of me like a ravenous monster who hadn't fed in centuries.
"You shouldn't be wandering alone, Darling" He said, and the word burned through me like acid.
Darling?
I wanted to tear it from the air, erase it from her memory. He didn't have the right to call her that. Not when she had once whispered it to me.
I wasn't angry at Katherine. My anger was reserved for the distance growing between us. The space Jade filled simply by standing beside her, the protector she trusted while I remained unseen.
"She was mine before time forgot her name," I whispered into the wind, my voice a fragile thread between worlds. "And still, I wait…"
As they walked the length of the market together, I stayed close, watching. Katherine tried to laugh at Jade's jokes, tried to listen to his stories, but her eyes betrayed her the way they kept drifting back to Mary's strange words that stirred something deep inside her.
She paused at a flower stall, fingers brushing the petals lightly, then unconsciously tracing the faint scar at the base of her wrist.
That mark wasn't new.
She didn't remember how it got there, but it tied her to me more tightly than any chain.
"Have you ever felt like something's watching you... even when you're alone?" she asked Jade with a low tone.
His eyes searched hers, worry flickering there. "Are you sure you're alright?"
"I don't know," she admitted, voice low. "Lately, I wake up feeling... off. Like I'm forgetting something important."
"Dreams?" he pressed gently.
She nodded. "I can't remember them. But they leave a weight. Like I'm missing a piece of myself."
Jade stepped closer, his presence warm and steady. "If there's anything you need anything, you know I'm here. And speciallyif you wanna talk about these dreams"
His sincerity was real, but something inside Katherine resisted. Because there was someone else. Someone she couldn't see, someone whose shadow stretched just beyond the edge of her vision. And that one is me.
That evening, as the sky burned gold with sunset, Katherine sat by the window, didn't touch her soup, fingers tracing the faint scar again. Her reflection stared back at her, but behind it, I stood there, a blurred.
She turned quickly, but saw nothing, as if the room was empty.
The golden hour.
That strange, sacred time when the sun kisses the earth goodbye. Even in ancient days, they said the veil thinned then, the fragile barrier between the realm of the living and the dead. Between dreams and memory. Between her and me.
And now, with the last light slipping behind the hills and the world bleeding into twilight, I felt it.
The veil between us thinning like breath on glass.
I reached for her again, through memory, through shadow, through every echo that still clung to her soul.
"Soon, my Lumine," I whispered. "You'll remember what the stars once swore to keep hidden."
Because if the gods had forgotten our love…
I would make them remember.
One stolen breath at a time.