Elena Rivers
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She sat in the silence, the envelope trembling in her hands.
Her name in ink.
His voice in paper.
It should've terrified her.
But it didn't.
It settled something.
Like hearing a song you forgot you loved, lyrics you never consciously learned but somehow knew by heart.
"Even now, you come where I've been."
The cathedral groaned as wind pushed against its bones. Dust curled in rays of fractured sunlight, dancing like ghosts above the pews. She stared at the altar, at the broken cross, at the ash-cracked candles that hadn't burned in years.
Why here?
Why did it feel like a place she'd been before?
She clutched the envelope tighter, trying to anchor herself to something real. But nothing felt real. Not since the notes. Not since the bracelet. Not since her own voice had started sounding like someone else's in her head.
And now... this.
There was a pull inside her. Like a thread being drawn tight. Like something buried in the marrow of her bones trying to surface.
You've been here before, it whispered.
She stood slowly. Her legs ached. Her back throbbed from how hard she'd hit the ground. But she walked forward anyway. Toward the altar. Toward the place where the light pooled in strange colors and the air smelled like memory.
She touched the edge of the old pulpit—and flinched.
A flash. Not a thought. A feeling.
Warm fingers brushing her wrist. A whisper near her neck. A pair of eyes—storm-grey, unblinking, known—watching her like she was the only thing that had ever made sense.
But the memory slid away before she could hold it.
She gasped. Stepped back. Her hand clutching her chest.
What the hell was happening to her?
She closed her eyes. Took a breath. Then opened them again.
And carved into the back of the altar, nearly erased by time, she saw three words:
"You were mine."
She didn't scream.
She just stood there—heart unraveling, reason dissolving—while the truth she'd been running from moved one step closer.
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