The staircase vanished behind them the instant they stepped off.
Rather than another dark passageway, Rin and Kael stood in a sunlit clearing—rich, green, pulsing. Petals drifted through the air in slow motion. The scent of peaches and lavender filled the air, and the wind brought the sound of laughter. True laughter.
Kael blinked. "Where the hell are we now?"
Rin didn't respond. She was already moving ahead, attracted by a sound she hadn't heard in years—happiness.
They came out at the border of a summer meadow. There was one cottage in the middle, its roof slanted, its garden covered in violet flowers. A clothesline swayed with white sheets. Somewhere within, music was playing—gentle, stringed, and awkward.
"I recognize this place," Kael whispered. "It's… familiar."
The door creaked ajar before they could knock.
And there he was.
Elias.
Not a boy this time.
Seventeen, perhaps eighteen. Taller. Laughing.
He was attempting to cook—badly, by the look of flour on his nose and the acrid smell wandering from the open window. In the middle of the kitchen stood a girl with a sword on her back and a scowl on her face.
"Reika," Rin breathed.
She was glowing. Her black hair was pulled back in a red ribbon. Her armor was half-off, apron half-on, and she was prodding at Elias's destroyed attempt at bread with a wooden spoon as if it had personally insulted her.
"You attempted to poison me," she accused.
"It's not poison, it's… experimental cuisine," Elias protested, grinning as he dodged away.
Their voices blended together—soft arguing swathed in love.
Rin took another step inside, observing it like a play from a forgotten life.
Outside the window, beneath a tree, sat another Rin—her younger self—bent next to Kael. Their shoulders brushed. She was drawing flowers in a notebook. He was acting as though he was reading, He held the book open in his hands, but the pages untouched by his gaze. His eyes, however, never left her. Not once. He pretended to read, but he let his fingers flip through lines he didn't even reading, but his focus was only on her—like she was the only sentence that ever mattered.
Kael, the one sitting next to Rin now, let out a slow breath.
"This… really happened."
It has to," she murmured. "A mutual memory, perhaps. A shard when everything made sense."
Young Rin rested her head on Young Kael's shoulder, and he didn't startle or flush or step away. He simply let her be there.
Reika threw a cloud of flour at Elias within.
"You are the worst cook I've ever encountered."
"And yet," Elias said, approaching, swatting it away from her face, "you continue to consume what I cook."
Reika paused.
"Because you stare at me like that."
She kissed him, then.
It wasn't hurried. It wasn't stolen. It was warm, slow, and filled with the sort of familiarity that results from loving a person across more lifetimes than one.
Rin blinked back tears.
"They loved each other."
"And they lost each other," Kael whispered. "Like everyone else here."
The scene started to fade.
The sky grew darker.
The air grew thinner.
Elias—older, broken, alone—stood at the doorway of the cottage now, observing the memory dissolve. His voice carried softly.
"I kept this one. I couldn't let it go."
He gazed at them, eyes empty but grateful.
"Because in this one… we were happy."
The memory disintegrated, light dissolving into strands.
The meadow was lost.
But in Rin's chest, something remained.
A heartbeat that wasn't hers.
A warmth that didn't disappear.
---