CHAPTER ONE:( The Beginning Of Us)

Elianah's POV

They didn't speak again that day. Her cousin had called her away with a tug of her sleeve, and the spell of the moment dissolved like sugar in tea. But as she walked off, she looked back.

He was still there — the boy by the fountain.

Still drawing.

Still watching.

Still holding the same quiet that lived in her bones.

She didn't know his name, only that something in her heart had paused when their eyes met. Not a crush. Not magic. Something older. Something that felt like remembering.

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Isaiah's POV

He went home with her eyes in his head — wide, curious, and steady. He didn't finish the sketch. He couldn't.

The face he had drawn so many times — the one he always imagined — had just walked up to him, real and breathing. It didn't make sense, but neither did the dreams, or the ache he sometimes woke up with.

That night, Isaiah placed the half-finished drawing under his pillow and whispered, "I hope I see her again."

He didn't know her name. But he knew her presence.

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Narrator

In another universe, they had died with their hands reaching for one another. In this one, they were born minutes apart — two halves of a whole the world had tried to scatter.

This life seemed softer. Easier. Gentler.

But the soul does not forget what it was made to survive.

And fate, though quiet for now, was only waiting.