CHAPTER FIFTEEN:And It All Came Back Rushing

Elianah

It started with a nosebleed.

One minute, she was in the school library, tracing her finger down the spine of a book titled Souls Beyond Time… and the next, her vision blurred and blood dripped onto the open page.

Her knees buckled.

The world tilted.

The past opened.

---

The chapel.

Burning.

Screams in the night.

A crowd gathered.

Torches.

Rage.

Someone shouting: "She bewitched him—!"

Elianah — not this Elianah, but a version wearing white — stained red — standing before the altar, arms spread, heart wide open.

And Isaiah, held down by guards, blood on his mouth, shouting her name like a curse and a prayer all at once.

---

She came to on the cold library floor, breathing like she'd been underwater for years.

Mr. Dane was kneeling beside her, hand on her back.

> "You're remembering," he said quietly.

She looked at him, shaking.

> "Why now? Why all at once?"

> "Because time's up," he answered. "You don't get to forget anymore."

---

Isaiah

He felt it when it happened.

Not like a pain — more like a snap in his soul.

He was painting alone in the studio again, but the brush slipped from his hand.

He saw her. Elianah.

Not in the studio. Not in this moment.

But in his head — falling to her knees in firelight, hands covered in blood that wasn't hers.

And a name. A name rose in his throat he hadn't said in this life.

> "Vienna…"

It wasn't her name now. But he knew it had been once.

He staggered backward, breath ragged.

And for the first time, he realized he wasn't just remembering her.

He was remembering what he did.

---

Cassia

She stood in the woods under the crescent moon, eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

The spell was already pulsing in the earth around her — slow, ancient, angry.

She had one more thing to do.

One more piece to place.

> "If I can't have him, they can't have peace," she whispered.

She reached into her pouch and dropped something into the soil — a single charred ring.

> "Let the past finish what it started."

The ground trembled.

Just once.

But it was enough.

---

Narrator

Sometimes remembering doesn't feel like healing.

It feels like burning.

Elianah and Isaiah had broken the seal.

Now the story was bleeding through.

Not just the love.

But the betrayal.

The violence.

The choice that ruined everything.

And somewhere deep beneath their school,

something that had been waiting centuries to rise again…

opened its eyes