He had forgotten the sound of his own heartbeat.
Not because it had stopped. Because for forty-seven lifetimes, the only rhythm he could hear was hers.
The first time he died, it was quick.
A truck. A highway. A woman's scream that cut off too soon.
The forty-seventh time he died, it was slow. Standing in a café that smelled of hazelnut and regret, watching her smile at a joke she had already laughed at forty-six times before. He felt his heart crack not break, crack and knew the loop would swallow him again before he could even say goodbye.
He said it anyway.
"Goodbye, Meera."
She tilted her head. That gesture. The one that had undone him across centuries compressed into days.
"We haven't even ordered yet," she said.
And the world ended.
Again.
But this time this time, as the sky shattered and the clock melted and the light swallowed everything he heard something new.
Her voice.
Not the Meera who sat across from him, laughing at his terrible jokes. Another Meera. Older. Worn. A woman who had watched him die once and had spent the rest of her life refusing to accept it.
"I'm sorry," she whispered across the static of collapsing time. "I'm so sorry. But I had to. You were dying, and I couldn't let you go."
Mehul reached into the light, grasping for a ghost.
"Who are you?"
"I'm the reason you remember."
The light pulsed. The loop reset.
And Mehul Khanna woke up to the same water stain, the same crack in the ceiling, the same grey light filtering through the same torn curtains.
But this time, his phone held a voice recording that hadn't existed before.
And for the first time in forty-seven mornings
He didn't feel alone.
He felt watched.
Not by a ghost.
By the architect of his eternity.
Now turn the page.
Chapter One begins where all loops begin:
6:47 AM.
February 14th.
Again.