2 months 15 days after:- 8 months 15 days to go till trial
It began with a sound.
Not loud—barely a whisper.
Metal against stone. Water dripping from a ledge. The soft crunch of wind over dry grass. But something in that sound pulled at her ribs like a thread, tightening.
Leoriness paused.
She had been sorting through their few supplies. Organizing the rations Elarion had gathered. But now her hands were still. Her breath shortened. The chill in her spine wasn't from the cave air.
"…That sound," she said softly.
Elarion, seated nearby, didn't respond. He glanced toward her once, then returned to sharpening the blade on his lap.
But he noticed the way she swayed slightly, as if her balance had slipped without warning.
Leoriness pressed her hand to the wall to steady herself. Her pulse was racing.
The sound came again. A sharp clang.
This time, her vision blurred.
And then—
The chain.
The collar.
The dark hall with no windows.
She gasped.
Memories poured in—vivid, sudden, and merciless.
She stumbled back, clutching her head.
The echo of her own voice screaming.
Needles.
Liquid burning through veins.
A name—not hers—called out over and over, as they corrected her again and again.
"You are Project L-47 now. Forget the rest."
She fell to her knees.
It hurt more than she expected. Not just the images—but the weight. Like a locked door inside her mind had cracked open, and everything behind it had been rotting in silence.
Her fingers dug into the ground.
"Why now?" she whispered. "Why… now?"
She had lived a lie. The noble title, the smiling handlers, the "uncle" who had raised her after her "parents died"—none of it had been real.
They had taken her.
As a child.
Drugged her. Trained her. Conditioned her.
"L-74…" she murmured. "That was me."
Her voice was thin.
Elarion stood slowly.
She didn't look at him. Couldn't. Her chest felt like it was caving in.
"They wiped me," she said. "Gave me a false name. Taught me how to act like a noble daughter. Said my memories were just illness. Said I was lucky. Lucky."
She laughed, but the sound was hollow.
"Years… I've lived under someone else's name. I forgot who I was."
Then her voice dropped.
"But I remember now. All of it."
" My name is not L-47 but, Leoriness. My childhood o don't know but I remember them, someone.... someone close to me. My parents.
I don't know....my memories... it's all over the place"
A long silence passed.
She remained on the ground, fingers tangled in her hair, as if trying to hold her thoughts from flying apart.
Then—
A shadow fell over her.
Elarion had stepped closer. He didn't offer comfort. He didn't speak.
He simply knelt beside her and waited.
Leoriness slowly looked up at him.
She had thought he was cold. Distant. Unreachable.
But in this moment, she saw something else.
Not gentleness. Not warmth.
But stillness. The kind that doesn't look away when people break.
"You're not surprised," she whispered.
"I knew there was a gap," he said calmly. "And that one day it would open."
She nodded faintly. "You didn't ask."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because you were still you."
Her throat closed.
He wasn't treating her like she was shattered. Or weak. He wasn't soothing her. He was simply there. Watching her fall apart—and not flinching.
It steadied her more than kindness ever could.
Her fingers slowly unclenched. Her breathing eased.
And for the first time, she didn't feel ashamed.
"…I don't know what's left of the girl I used to be," she said, quieter now. "But I know I want to stay beside you."
He didn't respond.
She didn't need him to.
He hadn't walked away.
And that, more than anything, told her everything.
---
The next morning:-
Leoriness stood at the mouth of the cave, hair tousled by the wind, arms crossed over her chest like armor.
She hadn't slept.
Elarion could tell.
But her eyes—red-rimmed but clear—were different now. Sharper. Focused. As if the pieces of herself that had shattered yesterday had come back together in a new shape. Harder. Less uncertain.
She hadn't spoken much since the memory flood.
Now she finally did.
"I want to get stronger," she said quietly. "Much more than I was before."
Elarion didn't turn from the fire. "Why?"
She didn't hesitate. "Because if I stay like this, I'll always be someone's weapon. Or someone's pity. I want to choose what I become."
There was a long pause. Then she added—
"And because if anything tries to take you away, I won't let it."
This time, Elarion turned.
Her words weren't soft. They weren't trembling. They were controlled—almost cold.
But he recognized the truth behind them.
She wasn't clinging to him. She was rooting herself near him.
A blade growing beside another.
He said nothing.
She took a step closer, her expression still unreadable.
"I know I had another name. A past. I remember what they did to me. But not who I was before. There's this… blank space in my mind, where something important should be."
He studied her. "What would you do if you found out?"
She blinked, surprised by the question.
Then: "That depends. If it's something I can burn, I'll burn it. If it's something I have to carry, I'll carry it."
Elarion's gaze lingered on her face—on the quiet fire now kindling behind her eyes.
Leoriness.
The name echoed in his mind, unspoken.
She didn't know it. But he did.
He had known the real princess of the East in his past life.
He had seen her corpse—burned, nameless, unclaimed, cast aside after war consumed her family. They said she had died young, lost during the collapse.
But he remembered.
She had been older than him by two years.
She had once stood on the palace walls barefoot in the rain, shouting at her retainers to let the children into the gates first.
She had once bled on his behalf, not knowing who he was.
She had once smiled—once.
And now, she was here.
Changed. Warped. Erased.
But her fire remained.
He didn't tell her. Not yet.
If the memories returned on their own, they would. But if they didn't, he wouldn't force her back into that role. He wanted her to choose who she became this time.
She moved past him and picked up the dagger he had sharpened the night before.
"I'll start here," she said. "This body is weak, but it remembers more than I thought."
She glanced at him.
"And if I lose control… don't stop me. Just end it."
His reply came without hesitation.
"No."
She blinked.
"I don't waste potential," Elarion said coolly. "Control it. Or die trying. But don't ask me to clean up your failure."
That made her smile—tired, faint.
"That's exactly why I trust you," she said. "Everyone else talks like I'll break. You never do."
And then, in a voice lower, steadier:
"I'll prove to you I won't. So don't look away."
She stepped into the clearing beyond the cave and began practicing—movements awkward but growing steadier, repetition after repetition. She didn't care about elegance. Only precision.
Elarion watched.
The girl who once flinched at shadows no longer hesitated.
She now had a name, the same name.
But she had chosen a direction.
And that, in his world, meant far more.
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Elarion POV :-
Her name, he knew it. The only one or the first on to know in both timelines.
Coincidence, yes, it is.
He knew because she told her as a friend in the past.
A friend for me or maybe, at that time I never tried to be more with her.
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