Velora hadn't slept.
Not because of dreams—she hadn't had those in weeks—but because of what came after them. The feeling that something had moved while she was unconscious. That the air had been disturbed. That someone had left something just out of reach.
She lit the candle. The flame leaned sideways again.
The mirror didn't show her reflection.
Only a rooftop.
Wind. Moonlight. Her younger self standing at the edge, arms wide like she could fly.
And a boy leaning beside her.
He wasn't older than sixteen. Black coat. Unruly hair half-tied, a coin flipping across his knuckles.
"You said you'd remember this," the boy whispered.
Her reflection said nothing.
He tossed the coin to her. She caught it without looking.
"Tell me this isn't a dream," she said.
"It isn't. But they'll tell you it was."
The image rippled—and then it was gone.
Velora didn't breathe for several seconds.
Then she turned from the mirror and opened the Archive interface. Her hands shook as she typed.
Memory Retrieval: Unauthorized Dream Event
Age: 16
Location: Tier IV Rooftops
Companion Unknown
Emotional Anchor: Coin Transfer
The interface flickered.
Result: ACCESS DENIED. MEMORY LOCKED BY COUNCIL SEAL 0041-RAE.
Her eyes narrowed.
"RAE" wasn't just a clearance code. It was a name.
She summoned the override sigil. It burned into her palm with a hiss.
The system resisted.
Then unlocked.
The memory chamber was dim, colder than the others. This one hadn't been accessed in seven years.
She stepped into the hexagonal room, where memory wasn't just watched—it was relived.
The shard suspended at the center flickered to life.
Velora's breath caught.
There she was. Sixteen. Laughing, loose, human.
And beside her—Rael.
Not the myth. Not the man who burned gods.
Just a boy. Watching her like she was the only star in the sky.
They sat at the edge of the rooftop, feet swinging over nothing.
"When we grow up," Rael said, "we'll rewrite everything."
"We'll need more than ink for that," she replied.
He pulled a coin from his coat and pressed it into her palm.
"Then take this. When they start lying to you, flip it. If it lands on the Hollow Star, you remember me."
"And if it doesn't?"
"Then I never existed."
She smiled.
"Deal."
They kissed—quick, awkward. Like a secret exchanged too early.
Then the feed cut.
Velora fell to her knees, hand over her mouth.
The coin. The voice. The rooftop.
She hadn't dreamed it.
They had erased it.
She stumbled back to her quarters.
The candle had gone out. The coin sat on her desk, still spinning. No one had touched it.
The mirror showed her reflection now—but her eyes were gold.
Not hers.
His.
She stared at the coin, now still.
Then whispered:
"Why did I forget you?"
From the glass, a voice answered:
"Because they needed you to be clean.
And I was the dirt under your fingernails."
She didn't flinch.
"You promised you'd never leave."
"I didn't," he said. "You just stopped looking."
She lit the candle again.
This time, it stayed lit.
She pulled her chair to the mirror and sat down, coin in hand.
"If I remember you," she said slowly, "if I truly remember… what do I become?"
The mirror darkened.
"The last honest thing in a world rewritten."
In the morning, Alastor came to her with a recovered fragment from the Ash Spiral—an area sealed since the Rebirth.
"We weren't supposed to find this," he said.
She took it without a word.
It was a stone. Smooth. Cracked down the center.
On its underside, burned into the grain:
VELORA
16 YEARS
ROOFTOP PROMISE
She touched it.
And remembered something Rael once said:
"If they break you, I'll rebuild you from memory."
Tears slid down her cheek before she even realized they had started.
There was a knock on her chamber door that evening.
She opened it slowly.
Arin stood there. Silent.
"I found something," he said. "It's… you need to see it."
He handed her a parchment, sealed with wax shaped like the Hollow Star.
She broke it.
Inside: Rael's handwriting.
"They'll lie about my death.
But not to punish me.
To protect the version of you that was allowed to survive."
She sat down, shaking.
"Do you understand now?" Arin asked.
She nodded.
Her voice was ash.
"I loved him. And they erased it."
The candle beside the mirror flared—just once.
And then went out.