The gallery space buzzed with a quiet kind of energy, the kind that settled in the air before something significant happened. Conversations wove through the room—soft, thoughtful, punctuated by the clinking of glasses. The walls were lined with framed excerpts from various works, words suspended in time, waiting to be read, waiting to be felt.
Oryn moved through the space carefully, his gaze tracing the printed words on the displays. Some were familiar—lines from authors he admired, voices that had shaped his own writing. Others were new, yet they carried a weight that felt intimate, as though they had been written for him to find.
And then he saw it.
A passage set apart from the rest, printed in delicate script on textured paper.
"Some stories aren't meant to be finished. Some endings don't echo."
His breath caught.
The words that had once been left in the margins of a book. The words she had written to him without knowing who he was.
The words that had stayed with him long after she had gone.
"She said that was her favorite passage," a voice murmured beside him.
Oryn turned slightly. A woman stood next to him, observing the piece with quiet reverence. She was older, perhaps someone from the publishing house.
"She wrote it?" he asked, his voice steady despite the way his heart had begun to race.
"She did." The woman smiled. "It's from one of her earlier pieces. The one that caught everyone's attention. Though, between us, I think it means more to her than she lets on."
Oryn swallowed, nodding. He wasn't sure what to say, wasn't sure if there was anything he could say that would make sense of the moment.
Because he had been the only other person to read those words before tonight. Before they had been printed and framed and displayed like something sacred.
Before she had left.
He scanned the room then, his eyes searching past the crowd, past the art-lined walls and the clusters of guests. And then—
There she was.
Lana Vienne.
She stood near the far end of the gallery, speaking with a small group of people. Her posture was relaxed, her hands moving as she spoke, her expression thoughtful.
For months, she had been a silhouette in his mind, a voice without a name, a presence felt only through ink and paper.
But now, she was here. Real.
Oryn exhaled slowly.
This was it.
This was the moment where things changed.
And this time, he wouldn't walk away.