Echoes in the Dark
Aaria wrapped her arms around herself as she walked home.
The waves still crashed softly behind her, but her mind was elsewhere—stuck on the stranger she had just met.
Why did he look at me like that?
His expression had been unreadable, but there was something about it that unsettled her. A kind of pain, deep and hollow, buried behind his icy-blue eyes. And when she had told him her name…
He looked like he was breaking.
Aaria shook her head, trying to push away the strange feeling creeping into her chest. Maybe she was just overthinking it. Maybe he had really lost someone with the same name, and it had just caught him off guard.
Still, something about him felt familiar.
With a sigh, she reached her apartment, kicked off her shoes, and collapsed onto her bed. Exhaustion tugged at her limbs, and before she even realized it, she had drifted into sleep.
And then—the dream came.
She was standing in the rain.
The cold droplets soaked through her clothes, running down her skin like tears. Her heart was pounding, her breath coming in short gasps as she reached for someone.
A figure stood in front of her.
A man. His long, dark hair was damp, clinging to his face. His eyes—blue, hauntingly blue—burned with something raw and desperate.
She felt a sharp pain in her chest. Why did this feel so real?
"Promise me," she heard herself whisper.
The man's face twisted in agony. "Aaria, don't—"
A blinding light. A loud crash.
Pain.
Then—nothing.
Aaria gasped as she jolted awake, her heart hammering. Her hands clutched the bedsheets, her breath shaky. The dream had been so vivid, so suffocatingly real.
And the man…
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember his face. She had seen him before. She was sure of it. But the memory was like a smudged painting—blurry, distorted, slipping through her fingers the harder she tried to grasp it.
Taking a deep breath, she whispered to herself, "Who… was that?"
But deep down, a part of her already knew.
Those blue eyes.
They belonged to the stranger on the beach.