Alex's POV
I followed her to the market like always. Her dress swayed with the wind. She walked with that same distracted grace, like her body was here but her thoughts somewhere else entirely.
I heard it all, her voice, low and uncertain, as she spoke to the old woman.
"She said it was just a dream," Katherine told Aunt Mary, fingers curling around her skirts. "But I was dancing with him."
I stood there in shock. And her words hit me like a bell rung in the hollow of my ribs.
She remembered. Not everything, of course not, but the way she said it, like she felt me...
Jade showed up, waving from afar this isn't the right time for him to come, annoying young man. I stayed at the edge of the square, watching the sun, lost in my thoughts.
The sun dipped lower. It was time for Katherine to return home, she was dancing with someone she couldn't name. With me.
I shadowed quietly as she walked home. The town dimmed around us, windows shuttering one by one. She didn't turn. Never looked back.
Later that night, long after her door had closed, I lingered by the garden wall. The one tangled in wild thyme and lavender. Bees had vanished with the sun. The scent lingered.
I sat there a little longer. Watching the lights inside flicker out.
I didn't realize the wind had changed.
The fog came suddenly. Not like weather, like will. It poured in low and fast, curling at my feet like a cat with claws. Then I felt it.
The pull.
Not like gravity. It was something deeper, like a thread being yanked in my gut.
I tried to turn away. Tried to resist. But I couldn't. "Am I going to die, please god, gods, angles, whatever up there please not yet, she's remembering piece by piece please I need more time"
The fog swallowed me whole. I moved without moving, pulled through the walls and wood, and silence, until suddenly...
I was standing in the middle of a house!!
I blinked. Everything looked wrong. The furniture. The smell of herbs and smoke. The air felt heavier. I guess I'm not dead yet what a relief.
And then I saw her.
Aunt Mary stood at the center of a small circle, salt marking the floor around her feet. Candles in each corner. She looked right at me.
This is aunt Mary's house!!!!
And am dragged to it. Uninvited, unwilling.
And she kept staring straight at me. No fear, no hesitation.
"So," she said, voice calm as cut stone. "You're the one who's been following her."
I stared, confused. My voice caught in my throat. Then finally, hoarse:
"How did I get here?"
Mary tilted her head. "The fog brought you. I called it. And you."
"You can see me???" I asked, sharper now. "What sorcery is this??? How can you see me??"
She stepped closer, slowly, like approaching a wounded animal. "No sorcery. Just old ways. The kind most people have forgotten." She studied me carefully. "You're not like the others. You're… tied to her! Bound."
My hands balled into fists."Why am I here?"
"That's what I'm trying to understand," she said. Then after a pause, "This isn't the first time she came back, is it?"
I flinched.
"No," I said quietly. "But it's the first time she sees flashbacks... alot."
"She's lived other lives?"
"Yes," I whispered. "But she never remembered them. Not really. A dream here, a dream there, but never like this. Never enough to find me again."
"And you?" Mary's voice was quiet now. "Have you always… followed?"
I closed my eyes for a moment. "Always. But this one… this one feels different. Like maybe she could find her way back to me."
Mary's eyes softened, not with pity, but with knowing.
"That's dangerous, spirit. Love like that, it doesn't just burns you, it may burn everything with it."
I looked away. "I know."
The candles flickered. The salt seemed to glow faintly beneath our feet. I didn't trust the shape of this night. But I trusted the grief in her tone. She understood.
"What's your name, spirit?" she asked, like she wasn't afraid of the answer.
"...Alex," I said, after a pause. "At least, that's what they called me in that life."
"And hers?"
I looked away, jaw tightening. The wind rustled the curtains. "Lumine," I said. "She was Lumine."
Aunt Mary folded her arms. "So it is you. The one who never lets go."
"I don't know how to," I admitted. "I've tried. I've really tried. I watched her live whole lives without me. And when she was born again, something just, pulled me back. Every time."
"You're bound by more than just love," she said. "You crossed the veil, but you didn't pass through. That kind of tethering leaves marks."
"I never meant to stay. I thought... the war would be the end. But I died, and the bond, didn't. It clung to me. Dragged me through lifetimes like a shadow with no shape. I don't even know what I am anymore !!!"
Mary's voice barely rose above the stillness. "You're what's left of a promise."
Her words hit like cold water.
"I don't even know how to break it," I cried. "Or how to cross over. There's no door. No light. Just... her. Always her. She's the only thing that still feels real."
"And yet she forgets you," Mary said gently.
"Every time she's reborn, she loses the thread. That's the price of a clean slate. You remember it all, she forgets."
"I know," I said. "I know. That's why no matter how I speak to her she never hears. Even if I reach out nothing, always nothing. She doesn't need a ghost clinging to her heels."
"Then why you follow her?"
"Because I don't know how not to."
Silence stretched. Even the flames seemed to quiet.
"You love her," Mary said simply. Not like question.
"I always have."
She stepped back to the circle and added a sprig of rosemary to the flame. It hissed, sharp and green.
"Then perhaps it's time you stop running from what you are. Stop floating in between. If she is Lumine again... then fate has brought you both to the edge of something. A door. A choice. And end."
I swallowed. "You think she'll remember?"
"I think… she already do. In dreams. In the ache in her chest when she looks at certain places and doesn't know why she wants to cry."
I looked down at my hands. They flickered faintly in the candlelight. I wasn't even fully human. Not really. Just a thread. A voice.
"But what do I do, Mary? What if remembering hurts her? What if it tears her apart?"
Mary reached out, not to touch, but as if to steady the space between us.
"Then be there," she said. "Not as a ghost. Not as a whisper. But as the boy who loved her once. And still does."
Mary's gaze didn't waver. And then carefully, slowly she reached out.
Her fingers brushed mine.
I gasped. Not because it hurt, but because I felt it.
No one had touched me since I died. Not truly. My hand should've gone through hers like mist. But her touch was warm, steady. Earth-bound.
"You… can touch me?" I breathed.
She nodded. "Not without cost. But yes. Just enough."
"How?" My voice cracked, half wonder, half ache.
"The veil thins for those who know where to press. I've been walking the edge of it longer than most would dare." She smiled faintly, a little sad. "But you, you're different. You're not just a ghost. You're woven into her fate like a golden thread that refuses to snap."
I looked at her then, really looked. "Is there a way… for her to see me? To feel me? Even just for a moment."
Mary paused.
"There might be," she said slowly. "But it wouldn't be easy. Or safe."
"I don't care." My voice came too fast, "I just, sometimes I think she feels me already. In the way she wakes up crying. Like I'm a shadow in her ribs. I just… I want her to know I'm not just a dream."
Mary's expression changed.
"There are rituals," she said. "Old ones. Dangerous ones. It would open her mind and eyes to things she may not be ready to face."
"She deserves the truth."
"She deserves peace," Mary snapped softly, but not unkindly. "That girl is carrying the glimpse of every life she's lived and doesn't remember. You may not be her only ghost."
She paused, then added, more somber now, "And even if we try… the ritual comes with a price. A steep one. It takes something, sometimes someone. And it doesn't always work."
I blinked. "What kind of price?"
Mary looked up at me then, eyes reflecting candlelight and centuries of knowing. "The kind that marks everyone involved. It bends the veil, Alex. Tears a hole in it. That kind of magic doesn't go unnoticed. It draws attention. From things that don't belong on either side."
My voice came quieter."But it would let her see me?"
"Maybe," she said. "Or maybe it would end her."
I went still.
"But," Mary added after a beat, "if she chooses it, if she asks the questions to see what lies beyond the veil… I could help her. Guide her."
"And if she doesn't?"
"Then you wait. You stay. As long as you must. And hope this time, her soul turns toward yours again."
My throat tightened. I looked away.
I said. "Hope...That's all I've ever had."
Mary narrowed her eyes, the candlelight reflecting other shadows across her face, and the room, warnings, things.
"You shouldn't be here much longer. The veil's thin tonight, but not forgiving. Holding this connection too long… it's not safe. Not for you. Not for me."
I stepped back instinctively, the edges of my form flickering.
"Then when?"
She rose slowly, robes falling against the floor, the air shifting with her.
"We'll speak again. But next time… it must be a choice. Hers. And yours."
"You know she won't choose to forget again," I said.
Mary's gaze softened, but her voice held weight.
"And if she remembers, she might break. Just like before."
A pause, then quieter:
"Rest now, spirit. Or whatever rest looks like for your kind."
"The dead weren't made to linger this long."
The flame in the candle bent sharply, casting new shapes, then I was gone.
I was back in the garden. The thyme still stirred in the breeze, bees long gone to sleep. Moonlight dusted the stone path, quiet and familiar.
I stood there for a long while, unsure if I'd imagined it all, her voice, the pull, the ritual. The way she looked at me, like she saw more than just a shadow, the way she touched me.
Maybe it was a dream. Maybe all of this was.
But the thread in my chest still ached. And insidethe house, she was sleeping resting her eyes.
And I was still bound. Still here.
And morning was coming...