CHAPTER THIRTEEN:Where The Light Can't Follow

Elianah

Her mother found her in the kitchen at 2 a.m., standing barefoot, holding a glass of water she hadn't drunk.

> "Is everything okay, El?" she asked gently.

Elianah nodded, but her eyes didn't move.

Because something had changed.

Not around her — within her.

She could feel memories waking up in the back of her mind like whispers under ice.

A man's voice calling her name in the dark.

The smell of burning sage.

Blood on her hands, but she wasn't afraid — she was mourning.

Later that night, she opened her journal and wrote just one line:

> What if love isn't always kind? What if it comes to collect?

---

Isaiah

He dreamed of her again.

Only this time, it wasn't Elianah.

It was her, but not her — another version, dressed in black, standing in the rain.

She was walking away from him.

He called after her, desperate, broken.

> "You said you'd stay. You said—"

But she didn't turn back.

Not even once.

When he woke up, his pillow was damp. His chest felt carved open.

He texted her before he could overthink it.

> Do you ever feel like we're running out of time, even though we just got here?

She replied an hour later.

> Yes. Like something's watching the clock for us.

---

Cassia

The ritual required three things: a thread of hair, a drop of blood, and a spoken name.

She already had the first two.

The name? She'd always known it. All of them.

Isaiah Faelan.

Elianah Viera.

And her own — the one she never used anymore.

Cassia wasn't her first name.

Just the most recent one.

> "I loved him once," she murmured, placing the ingredients in a velvet pouch.

"In one life, he was mine.

In another, he chose her.

But in this one… I decide."

And for the first time in centuries, her hand trembled.

Because even she didn't know what would happen if she failed.

Again.

---

Mr. Dane

He stood by the window, watching the sun bleed into the horizon like a warning.

He could feel it. The shift. The unraveling.

The past wasn't just leaking in — it was rushing back like a flood.

He opened a drawer and pulled out a sealed letter addressed to no one.

> "If they remember too fast," he said softly, "they'll break."

Then he locked the drawer again.

Because some truths…

even fate was afraid of.

---

Narrator

There are kinds of love that rebuild you.

And there are kinds that return to remind you what broke you in the first place.

Elianah and Isaiah were starting to remember both.

And the further they reached for each other…

The closer something else reached for them.

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