The Fracture

Modern Day — Brooklyn Apartment, 2:14 AM

Lirael stared at the dagger laid across her kitchen table, its blade catching the flicker of candlelight. She'd smuggled it out of the museum in her tote bag, wrapped in a scarf still faintly scented with Alaric's cedarwood cologne. The weight of it felt unnatural, as if something inside the metal pulsed with a heartbeat that wasn't hers.

The runes along the blade's hilt gleamed, their etchings whispering in a language she didn't understand—yet somehow recognized. "My heart to yours, forever." The words taunted her, weaving into the migraine that had settled at the base of her skull since the vision in the storage room.

Her laptop sat open, its screen a chaotic mess of search results: Norse curses, cyclical reincarnation, heart-key myth. She scrolled mindlessly, absorbing words that shouldn't feel so personal.

Beside it, Alaric's sketchbook lay open to a drawing of her—wild-haired and fierce, gripping the dagger like a lifeline. The sight sent a shiver down her spine. He had drawn her with precision, down to the exact tilt of her lips when she was lost in thought.

Who were we?

The migraine sharpened as flashes of memory surfaced—storm-lashed fjords, steel clashing against steel, a burning village. And Alaric's face, then and now, overlapping like double-exposed film.

Her phone buzzed, breaking the spell. A text from Mara, her grad-school roommate turned yoga instructor:

> You still alive? Or did that Viking ghost finally kidnap you?

Lirael snorted, typing back:

> Worse. Met a guy who thinks we're cursed.

Three dots bounced. Then:

> Hot?

She glanced at Alaric's sketch. Devastatingly.

Complicated, she replied.

Mara fired back a GIF of a dumpster fire. Accurate.

The Midnight Hour Café, 10:00 AM

Alaric arrived smelling of rain and ink, his hair damp from the downpour. He slid into the booth across from her, dropping a leather-bound journal onto the table with a soft thud.

"I found something," he said, his voice quieter than usual.

Lirael arched a brow, sipping her espresso. "Your diary? Let me guess—'Dear Diary, I'm a thousand-year-old emo vampire.'"

He didn't laugh. "Letters. From our past lives."

She set her cup down, suddenly less amused. He flipped the journal open, revealing delicate transcriptions in Old French, Italian, and Polish. The ink had faded in places, but the careful translation notes in the margins made it clear—he had been piecing this together for years.

"This one," he said, tapping a passage, "is from fourteenth-century Paris. A woman named Léa wrote it."

Her stomach twisted. Léa. The name struck like a bell tolling through her bones.

"What does it say?" she whispered.

"'Forgive me, Alaric. I thought betrayal would set me free. It only made the chains tighter.'" His voice wavered. "She's you. Or… a version of you."

Lirael shoved the journal away. "This is insane. You're asking me to believe I've been rebooted for centuries like a Netflix show?"

Alaric exhaled, reaching into his pocket. He slid a worn photo across the table. A grainy image of a medieval painting. A woman in a linen gown stood in a moonlit garden, her face Lirael's twin. Beside her, a man in a mercenary's tunic—Alaric.

Her breath hitched. "Photoshop."

"It's in the Louvre." His gaze was steady, searching. "You feel it, Lirael. The déjà vu. The scars. The way your pulse races when I walk into a room."

Her chair scraped against the floor as she stood abruptly. "I need air."

Flashback — Paris, 1356

Léa's hands trembled as she sewed gold thread into the spine of a psalter. The workshop smelled of vellum and beeswax, but all she could taste was fear.

Alaric—no, Alaricq—slept in the loft above, his wounds still seeping through fresh bandages. He had stumbled into her shop three nights ago, half-dead, mumbling about a traitor's bounty on his head. She had hidden him, lied to the city guards. And now…

A letter crinkled in her apron pocket. Found tucked in his boot, its seal broken.

To Alaricq de Bourges, it read. By order of the King, execute the bookbinder's husband. His heresy cannot stand.

Her Jacques. Sweet, foolish Jacques, who whispered against the Crown's taxes over too much wine. Murdered, not by bandits, but by the man she had nursed back to health.

The loft floorboards creaked. Alaricq descended, his smile fading when he saw her face. "Léa?"

She flung the letter at him. "You killed him."

He paled. "I had no choice."

"Everyone has a choice!" Her voice broke. "You chose your king. Now I choose mine."

When the guards dragged him away, he didn't fight. His last words haunted her: "Next time, forgive me."

Modern Day — Brooklyn Rooftop

Lirael gripped the railing, the city skyline blurred by tears.

Alaric found her there, silent, holding out a handkerchief.

"Was it real?" she asked. "Paris. The betrayal."

"Yes."

"Did I… did she ever regret it?"

"Every day." He hesitated. "But the curse doesn't care about regret. It wants balance. A betrayal for a betrayal."

She turned to him. "How do we break it?"

"The heart-key. A Viking amulet split into three pieces. It's mentioned in a poem I translated—"

"'The hollow heart, once whole, will sever time's cruel toll,'" Lirael recited, surprising herself.

Alaric stared. "How did you…?"

"I don't know." The words had spilled out like a reflex, an echo from a life she couldn't remember.

He stepped closer, his breath warm against her temple. "The first piece is in Oslo. Come with me."

Antique Shop — Later That Day

The bell above the door tinkled as Lirael entered a cramped Greenwich Village shop, its shelves cluttered with globes and moth-eaten taxidermy.

Alaric had mentioned an artifact dealer who specialized in Norse relics, but the place reeked of patchouli and desperation.

The shopkeeper, an elderly woman with a crow perched on her shoulder, emerged from the shadows. "You seek the heart-key."

Lirael startled. "How did you—?"

"You have her face." The woman lifted a withered hand, revealing a silver ring. Its inscription read Léa & Alaricq, 1356. "Some souls are magnets for sorrow," she whispered. "Break the cycle, or it will break you."

Back at her apartment, Lirael opened the dagger's case—and found the ring inside, though she had never taken it from the shop. A crow's feather lay beside it, bearing a warning in blood-red ink: "Trust nothing. Especially him."