Elena woke with a start, the child's whispered voice still echoing in her mind. "Mama, they're already here." Her chest tightened, a strange mix of fear and longing washing over her. Memories she didn't know she had pressed against her consciousness—shards of another life, another time, when love had burned brightly and then been torn away.
She walked through the quiet streets of her town, feeling the pull of some invisible thread guiding her. Each corner seemed familiar, yet strange, as if the city itself remembered her from another lifetime. Shadows flickered at the edges of her vision—flashes of a laughter too warm, a presence too loving, a hand she had longed to hold.
She paused at the fountain in the square, its waters catching the light of a rising moon. In the reflection, she glimpsed a figure she could not place, yet one that felt like home. Her heart ached with recognition. A wave of sorrow and longing swept over her; she realized she was chasing a ghost, yet the ghost was no mere memory—it was a promise of love that had endured through centuries.
Then she saw him—or rather, the echo of him. Across the market square, a man moved with the familiar grace of someone who belonged in her soul. His eyes, deep and knowing, mirrored a thousand lifetimes of shared joy and pain. He didn't see her, yet she knew—she always knew—that fate had not yet finished writing their story.
As Elena lingered, trembling between hope and despair, she heard the soft rustle of leaves. It was as though the past itself whispered, urging her to remember, to follow, to reclaim what had been lost. And in that moment, the shadows of her past wrapped around her heart, tender and painful, reminding her that love could endure even the cruelest losses.