(Time folds not in halves or in lines, but in grief. And in grief, I've always found you.)
The night was soaked in silence.
Not the kind that brings peace—the kind that creaks like old bones, waiting to break. Somewhere in Azrael City, neon signs blinked above late-night diners. A distant train howled like a ghost trying to make it home. The wind carried the scent of petrichor and burnt wires.
Kai stood on the edge of a rooftop, barefoot, in pajamas that didn't belong to them. Their silver hair glinted under the flickering light of the broken billboard behind them. They weren't sure how they got there—or why their heart was hammering like it had just lost something sacred.
"Thirty-seventh life," they whispered to the sky. "And I still wake up incomplete."
They didn't remember who they were in the thirty-sixth.
But they remembered him.
The store was dead quiet. Shelves of expired cereal and energy drinks made the place look like a graveyard of capitalism. Kai wandered in, drawn not by hunger but by that magnetic tug they had learned to stop questioning.
Aisle 7.
He was there. Black hoodie. Snake tattoo coiled up his neck. Apple soda in hand like it meant something.
He looked at Kai like they were a dream he regretted waking up from.
"Didn't think I'd find you this soon," he said. Voice calm. Laced with a hundred heartbreaks.
Kai froze.
His name spilled from the back of their mindlike blood through gauze.
Elio.
And he remembered.
Let's rewind.
Not time—just story.
Kai was not human. Not really. Not anymore.
Born in the shadows of a forgotten realm, they had been cursed—or gifted, depending who you asked—with chrono-sight. They could walk through moments, taste memory, and bleed between timelines. But they could not hold anything still.
Not even love.
Especially not Elio.
Back on the roof, they sat side by side, not speaking.
Elio bit into an apple, the crunch cutting the quiet like a razor. The city yawned below them. Somewhere, a woman screamed in laughter or pain. A child wailed. Tires screeched. Azrael always sounded like it was trying to forget itself.
"You remember everything?" Kai asked eventually.
"Every damn death," he replied.
Kai winced.
"Even the one where I drowned you in a bathtub in 1921?"
"Especially that one."
They looked at each other, not with trust—but with history.
Elio pulled out a journal.
Leather-bound. Weathered. Bleeding symbols in languages not spoken since the moons were young.
"It's you," he said, flipping to a page with Kai's face drawn in charcoal. "Every lifetime. Every time I find you again, I write it down. Just so I don't forget who I am."
Kai touched the page like it might burn.
"You stalk me through time?"
"I love you through time. There's a difference."
Kai didn't argue. They couldn't.
There was a prophecy once written in blood across an altar Kai barely remembered.
Two immortals. One cursed to forget. One doomed to remember.
A love so old the stars themselves split to contain it.
A cycle that would only end when one killed the other without regret.
So far, they'd both failed.
"I don't want to do this again," Kai said. Voice trembling. "I can't keep falling in love just to forget."
Elio reached for their hand, gently.
"Then don't forget this time."
Kai stared at the skyline. At the moon that looked just like the one in 1653. And 1999. And the apocalypse that almost took them both in 2120.
"How do we break it?" they whispered.
"I don't think we can."
Silence again.
Down below, in a secret chamber under the city's spine, a woman in a red veil traced Kai's name on a map of ley lines. The Order of Erasure had been watching. Waiting.
Immortals weren't meant to feel. Weren't meant to remember. Weren't meant to love.
But Kai and Elio had always been a glitch.
The kind of glitch that rewrote fate.
And the Order wanted them erased.
Back on the roof, Kai let their head rest on Elio's shoulder.
"If this is our last loop," Kai said, "will you still love me?"
"Even if you kill me again," Elio replied. "Especially then."
They didn't kiss. Not yet.
But their hearts remembered.
Even if time didn't.
Flashback: Timeline 12 — The Silver Lake
The water had glowed under a crescent moon. Kai's feet dangled in it, their hands cupped around a flower Elio had woven from reeds and magic. It wasn't the first time they'd been in love. But it was the only time they were happy.
Elio ran his fingers down their back.
"I don't want to die this time," he said. "Promise me we live."
Kai shook their head.
"We always die. Even when we live."
Elio threw the flower into the lake. It burst into flames before it touched the surface.
They laughed anyway. Because sometimes, even cursed lovers deserved to laugh before dying.
Present — Azrael City Alleyways
A cloaked figure paced through the shadows. Their fingers dripped with ink—not black, but the sickly violet of erased souls. A sigil blinked under their boot, then vanished.
"The cycle must close," they muttered.
Another voice answered from the shadows: "Then make them forget each other. For good this time."
"Or make them fall so hard they destroy each other. Either works."
A flicker of firelight revealed pale lips and eyes that hadn't blinked in centuries.
"The immortal rewrite ends tonight."
Back on the roof, Kai's phone buzzed. Unknown number. No ringtone.
A single text:
"Do not trust the moon."
They stared at it for a full minute.
"What is it?" Elio asked.
Kai didn't answer. Just slowly tilted their head back to look up at the moon.
It was watching them back.
And it was smiling.
The Moonlit Convergence
The following evening, the moon hung low—almost unnaturally so. Kai stood in a cemetery that hadn't existed the day before, in a city that had never known snow, now blanketed in white ash.
Elio approached from behind, his boots silent against the crumbling earth. He was holding a compass that spun wildly.
"This place isn't real," he said.
Kai nodded. "Neither are we. Not anymore."
They walked side by side toward a mausoleum engraved with both their names.
Kai Elion D'vire
Elio Kaien Roth
"We're buried here," Elio whispered.
Kai touched the stone. It was warm.
"Maybe this is where we end it. Or where it began."
Suddenly the ground shook. The mausoleum cracked open. Light—gold and violet—spilled into the sky.
A voice echoed from within:
"One of you must forget. One of you must choose. Or the world will bleed."
A Glimpse into the Past life Archive
Somewhere below Azrael's forgotten catacombs, buried beneath libraries time had choked out of memory, sat the Past life Archive.
Glass cylinders floated mid-air, each one containing a version of Kai and Elio. In one, they were warriors drenched in gold armor and desert fire. In another, they were sailors lost at sea. One showed them kissing beneath falling stars. Another had them strangling each other with bloodstained hands.
And at the very center of it all, the Master Archivist stood watching—a tall, androgynous figure with eyes like melting metal and veins threaded with silver light.
"They've reached the mausoleum," the Archivist whispered.
A young assistant beside them—newly resurrected, breathless with confusion—asked, "Is this the end?"
The Archivist didn't blink. "No, love. This is the prologue."
Kai's Memory Glitch
Kai sat cross-legged beneath a flickering streetlamp, alone now, tracing runes into the dust with a broken bottle. Elio had gone to find answers. Maybe food. Maybe both. Time felt thinner every hour.
They tried to remember who they were in Life 22.
Nothing.
Life 15?
Just flashes: rain, a train, and Elio bleeding on a stairwell.
"What's wrong with me?" they whispered, pressing trembling fingers to their temple. "Why do I never get to remember the happy ones?"
A shimmer danced in the air above them. For a heartbeat, Kai saw a different version of themself—darker, older, crowned in bone and flame.
That version whispered, "Because happiness never left scars. And scars are what you cling to."
Kai screamed. And the image vanished.
Elio at the Oracle's Door
Elio stood at a rusted gate deep inside the crater of a fallen star. Fireflies hovered in still air. The door in front of him pulsed like a heartbeat. Above it, written in an old tongue:
"Only liars may enter. Only truths may leave."
He pressed his palm against the stone.
The Oracle was ancient. Not a being—just a voice. And it echoed now.
"Ask."
"How do I save us?" he said.
"You cannot. You must become something else."
"What does that mean?"
"You must either forget her or become the weapon that kills her."
Elio's throat tightened. "There's no third choice?"
"There is. But it requires pain beyond death and memory. Are you willing to be rewritten?"
He hesitated. And in that pause, the door opened.
The Moon Watches
The moon hung low and red now, almost bruised. Across Azrael's sky, stars blinked out like candles snuffed by breath.
The Order of Erasure gathered in their glass temple atop Varn Hill, chanting. The altar glowed with names—Kai's, Elio's, and the names they'd held in thirty-seven other lifetimes.
One by one, those names began to vanish.
If the spell completed, Kai and Elio would wake up strangers.
Again.
Forever.