That night, Lucien couldn't sleep.
The image of Aveline—her eyes glassy with unshed tears, her voice wrapped in sorrow—haunted him.
"In a version of time that doesn't exist anymore."
The words echoed like a ghost. His instincts said to believe her. His heart already had.
He found himself sketching again. Something he hadn't done in years.
First, it was hands—his, larger, cradling another. Then eyes. Then a smile he was certain he'd once memorized.
He didn't remember when he started drawing her.
But when he looked down at the page, Aveline stared back.
Aveline had never feared silence until now.
It stretched between her and Lucien like a canyon—no memory to bridge it, no shared history in this version of time.
But emotion doesn't obey logic.
And when their paths crossed again the next morning, he smiled—soft and cautious—and it made her feel seventeen again. Like the first time he ever looked at her that way.
Lucien gestured to the coffee table in the courtyard. "Walk with me?"
She nodded.
They walked in near silence, but it was a different kind this time—warm, not empty.
Like the silence of two people who didn't need to speak to be heard.
Later, Aveline locked herself inside one of Concordia's unused neuro labs.
Clara would have her head if she found out. But Aveline needed answers.
The only way to recover memories from fragmented timelines was through resonance exposure—matching a subject's neural patterns to stimuli from lost loops.
It was illegal under current protocol.
But then again… so was love.
She hooked herself to the interface, eyes scanning the flickering code for Anchor Files—memories preserved by emotional weight.
She found five under her name.
One was labeled:
"Loop 5: Cathedral. Proposal. Snowfall."Emotional Sync Level: 89%
She uploaded it to a secret flash drive and locked the system again.
She didn't cry.
She smiled.
Because now she had proof.
Elsewhere, Clara watched the security feeds with tight lips.
"Is she in the lab again?" asked a voice behind her.
Jules.
Clara nodded.
"She's close to finding out what really caused Loop 1," she said.
Jules crossed his arms. "Maybe she deserves to know."
Clara turned to him, eyes cold. "If she remembers what she did to him in the first timeline… it might break them both."
At dusk, Lucien knocked gently on Aveline's door.
She opened it, surprised but not unhappy.
He held out a folded piece of paper.
"I don't know why I drew this," he said. "But I think it's you."
Aveline unfolded it.
It was the exact image of her from Loop 5. Her hair down, the cathedral veil behind her, snowflakes resting on her lashes.
She blinked rapidly.
"You remember," she whispered.
Lucien didn't reply.
He stepped closer.
And with hands that trembled only slightly, he brushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"I don't know who you are," he said. "But I think I'm falling in love with you anyway."