The Girl Who Dreamed in Ruins...
Time is not a river.
It is a wound that never learned to close.
---
The city was not made for thirteen o'clock.
But the clocktower at the heart of old Mirrowen rang it anyway.
A low, aching toll—one note too many.
And with it, the birds forgot how to fly.
The clouds blinked, then wept bloodless rain.
Mirrors refused to show reflections.
Only one person heard the bell clearly.
Eira.
---
Eira: Echoes and Rain
She stood in the street, soaked, hair clinging to her cheeks like mourning veils.
Around her, people moved in a haze, smiles stiff like puppet mouths. No one looked up.
But Eira did.
The sky was the color of dried violets. The kind you press in books and pretend you'll come back to.
And there, between the clouds, she saw a shape—
A gate.
Floating. Trembling. Formed from thorned roots and lightless stars.
It pulsed once.
Like a heartbeat.
Like a warning.
She took a step back—into a puddle.
And her reflection smiled at her.
But she hadn't.
---
Elias: The Memory Blade
He ran.
Through alleys that remembered him. Past doors that used to bow open. Every step peeled a memory from the silence inside him.
And still the blade on his back hummed—not with steel, but with sorrow.
She remembers, it said.
She remembers, and so they awaken.
He stopped at a crossroads.
There, leaning against a lamppost, was a little girl.
She held a music box.
She turned the crank.
It didn't play music.
It played names.
Old names.
His name.
Eira's name.
And the name of the first god.
He knelt, trembling.
"Where did you get that?"
She looked at him with eyes like broken suns.
"From the rose that bloomed backward," she said.
"Didn't you plant it?"
---
The God-Child in the Café
He stirred his tea, still untouched.
A man near him forgot how to speak.
A woman next to him began whispering to a lover she buried ten years ago.
All the lights flickered to black.
The god-child smiled, eyes glinting like mirrors turned toward heaven.
Thirteen o'clock had struck.
And with it, the first gate cracked.
"Let them remember," he said.
"And then… let them choose to forget again."
---
Final Scene: Eira Meets Elias
They found each other beneath the rose tree in the park.
The one that never bloomed until now.
It was in full bloom.
But the petals were falling upward.
Eira looked at Elias, eyes wide with memory and something worse—recognition.
"You were there," she said, voice a whisper breaking on a scream.
"You carried me through the temple fire."
He nodded once.
But she took a step back.
"Then why do I remember you leaving me behind?"
Silence.
Then, the tree above them sighed.
And from its roots, a voice came:
"Because love is the cruelest way the gods break a vow."
Some dreams are doors.
Some doors are graves.
And some graves still breathe.
---
The night after the rose tree bloomed upside down, Mirrowen did not sleep.
Windows shuttered themselves.
Streetlamps flickered and whispered.
Time turned to fog, and the fog began to listen.
At the center of it all stood Eira—barefoot, soaked in light that did not belong to any star.
---
Eira: The Blooming Curse
She hadn't slept.
She couldn't.
Every time she closed her eyes, she fell into herself—and found a city buried beneath her ribs.
A thousand streets.
A thousand voices.
And one child standing at the end of every road, always whispering:
"You left us."
---
She awoke screaming beneath the violet rose tree.
Elias stood nearby, sword unsheathed, not against her—but against the space between seconds.
Something had moved there.
Something that had worn a face before.
---
"You're remembering too fast," he said, not unkindly.
"You'll burn from the inside out."
Eira looked at him—really looked—and saw what she hadn't dared.
His eyes no longer belonged to mortals.
They held storms too old for maps.
And guilt too old for gods.
She stood, voice shaking: "Tell me the truth. Tell me why I remember temples burning. Why I feel thorns growing from my heart."
Elias hesitated.
And then he did something strange.
He knelt.
Not to beg.
But to bury the sword in the earth at her feet.
A gesture.
A vow.
Or perhaps, surrender.
"The truth," he whispered, "is that you were never meant to be reborn."
---
The Truth: The War That Never Ended
Long ago, before the moons had names, seven gods ruled over silence.
They built their temples not from stone, but from memory.
Their worshippers never prayed—only remembered.
To forget a god was to kill them.
But memory is fragile.
And love is crueler than time.
So the gods fell, one by one—
Not to blades, but to heartbreak.
And one god, the youngest, chose to be reborn in human form.
To live, not as a god—but as a girl.
That god… was Eira.
She had forgotten herself to survive.
But now, thirteen o'clock had struck.
And the world was remembering her.
---
The Return of the First Gate
As the moon fractured into silver feathers, the first gate opened.
It did not swing or creak.
It sang.
Low and mournful, like the sea grieving the loss of a lighthouse.
Through it stepped a figure wreathed in black sunfire.
No face. No name.
Only a voice:
"Memory is a lie the heart tells to keep bleeding.
You… Eira… were our greatest lie."
The ground shattered beneath her.
But Elias caught her, arms strong despite the shaking.
He whispered, "Run."
But Eira did not.
She stood, barefoot and unarmed.
And said, softly:
"I didn't forget because I was weak.
I forgot because I once loved you all."
The gate paused.
Even silence listened.
And from deep within her chest, something ancient stirred—
Not power. Not rage.
But a fragment of violet flame.
---
Ending Scene: The Flower Beneath the Temple
They ran together—to the ruins of the old temple, now buried beneath city steel.
Each step was a heartbeat in reverse.
There, in the dark, under the roots of a world built on amnesia, they found a single flower blooming—
The first Violet Blood Rose.
It opened as Eira touched it.
And whispered in her voice:
"Will you remember me now, even if it kills you?"
She closed her eyes.
And answered:
"Yes."...