CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE:Where The Forgotten Begins To Remember

Aislen

She never asked to be reborn into this world.

But the visions kept coming — out of place and out of time.

Flashes of wars she'd never fought.

A touch that once felt like home.

A name that scratched at the back of her throat:

"Kael."

She didn't know why she said it.

Didn't even know anyone named that.

But when she walked past the old mirror stall in the market, her reflection… shifted.

For a moment, she saw someone else in her place.

Gold bands on her arms.

Fire in her eyes.

A thousand lifetimes folded into one breath.

Then — gone.

But the ache lingered.

Kael

The name no longer hurt him.

Because it didn't belong to anyone he could remember.

And yet...

He began to notice things.

A book he'd never seen on his shelf — opened to a poem about soul threads.

A girl's voice in his dreams calling his name with unbearable tenderness.

A child's drawing left in his studio — two figures, hands clasped, drawn in stardust and flame.

He lived a quiet life now.

But something louder than memory was beginning to break through.

Something like fate.

Selene and Soren

They returned to the ruins.

Not for answers.

But for the questions that never left.

"I think," Selene said quietly, "this place remembers even when we forget."

Soren nodded. "And maybe… that's the point."

They stood in silence. The wind around them shifted, and for the briefest moment—

They saw them.

Elianah. Kael.

Standing side by side.

Not as ghosts.

Not as memories.

But as echoes preparing to return.

Then — gone again.

But now, Selene could feel it too:

The story wasn't over