Waking up in her room remained a mystery to Julia, but her mother confirmed that she had come home drunk the night before.
There were no answers about what had happened in the cemetery, with the watch, at her old house, or with the strange man she had encountered.
All Julia knew was that everything felt hazy—like a dream she couldn't quite shake off.
The watch stayed with Julia for days.
Sometimes in her drawer, sometimes tucked beneath her pillow, but never far. Its presence felt like a heartbeat—a constant, quiet pulse that refused to let her forget. She had tried to dismiss it as a dream, a fluke, or some kind of sleepwalking incident.
But every time she held the watch, she felt something deeper stirring within her. A low hum in her chest. A whisper in her blood.
She wasn't ready. Not yet.
Then her mother collapsed.
It happened in the middle of the afternoon. One minute, she was humming in the kitchen, peeling oranges.
The next, she was on the floor. Unconscious. Unmoving.
The hospital ran tests—bloodwork, scans, hours of poking and prodding—but nothing made sense. No trauma. No signs of illness. Just… stillness. Like something had been switched off inside her.
Julia sat by her mother's bedside, the hospital lights humming faintly overhead. Her mother looked peaceful, but her stillness felt wrong. Heavy. Too quiet.
"I don't understand," Julia whispered, gripping her mother's hand. "You were fine. You were fine."
She stayed with her late into the night. At some point, she pulled the golden pocket watch from her coat pocket, holding it loosely in her lap.
The two birds on the chain caught the light from the monitor beside the bed—soft flashes of gold that seemed to flicker like candlelight.
She didn't know what made her do it—maybe desperation, maybe instinct—but she slipped the watch into her mother's hand.
Her fingers curled reflexively around it.
And then, for the briefest moment, her mother whispered in her sleep.
One word.
"Victor."
Julia's heart skipped.
She leaned closer, her voice trembling. "Mother? What did you say?"
But her mother didn't speak again.
Later that night, when Julia returned home, she went to her mother's room—searching for something, anything. She didn't even know what she was looking for until she found the photo.
Tucked into the back of an old journal, hidden beneath yellowed pages, was a small black-and-white photograph.
Two college students. Her mother, laughing, eyes crinkled with joy. And the young man beside her—his arm around her shoulders, his eyes bright with something soft and magnetic, full of life.
Julia's breath caught in her throat as she studied his face. She wasn't sure why it hit her so hard, but there was something deeply familiar about him. His features, so strikingly similar to someone she knew, someone she had loved.
'Vincent!'
But this wasn't Vincent. It couldn't be. The man in the photograph was someone else entirely—someone from her mother's past.
His name, she remembered. Victor. Her mother's first love.
Julia sat there for who knows how long. Only the ticking clock witnessed it.
The silence in the house was thick, but not oppressive.
It was the kind of quiet that comes when you've heard too many things you can't unhear and seen too much that you can't forget. Julia sat there, staring at the photo, trying to reconcile the impossible.
The more she studied Victor's face, the more she felt like something was slipping through her fingers—like there was a connection she couldn't fully grasp.
His eyes, the warmth in his smile—it all reminded her so much of Vincent, the man who had once been everything to her.
Victor. Vincent.
Her pulse quickened. Could it be possible? Was there a deeper connection between them? Two men who seemed so similar in essence, in soul, but separated by time.
'Was Vincent a part of something bigger? Something that spanned lifetimes?'
A strange feeling of déjà vu crept over her, and her chest tightened. Was this all tied to something she wasn't ready to understand yet?
She shifted uncomfortably, running her fingers along the edges of the photograph. She couldn't stop staring at it.
There was too much familiarity between them—too many unanswered questions.
Her fingers closed around the golden pocket watch she had kept close, the chain cool and heavy in her hand. She hadn't dared to use it yet, but the weight of it seemed to grow with every passing moment. The two birds on the chain glimmered in the dim light, their presence a constant hum in her chest.
You've lived before.
The words of the man who had given her the watch echoed in her mind again, though she hadn't wanted to believe them at first.
But now, sitting there with the photograph of her mother's first love and the overwhelming sense of familiarity, Julia wasn't so sure she could dismiss the idea anymore. Maybe there was something to this—this idea of souls living more than once, of ties that could stretch across time.
The photograph, the watch, the strange pull between Victor and Vincent—it was all too connected to ignore.
If she just had someone to rely on at this very moment. But the house was silent, save for the ticking clock and the low hum of the fridge — reminders of how empty everything had become.
Her mind began to swirl, and in the midst of it, she felt the familiar pang of loss. Her sisters.
Elle. Sasha.
And Vincent.
Julia sat on the couch, the golden pocket watch resting in her palm, the two birds across from each other, both in mid-flight. She traced them absently, her thoughts straying back to that year—the year everything had fallen apart.
Vincent.
Her first love. The one she thought would stay with her forever. But nothing lasts forever, does it?
They had broken up before Elle died. Before the heart-wrenching emptiness that settled in their house when she passed away at sixteen. It wasn't a sudden thing. It was slow, painful—an unraveling that neither of them could stop.
Vincent had been there for her for a while. But grief is a strange thing. It has a way of pulling people apart, of making everything you once knew feel like a lie.
He had looked at her one night and said, "You're not the same person anymore, Julia, And I'm not either."
The words still haunted her. She wanted to tell him that it wasn't her. It was the grief. It was losing Elle. It was the loss of something she could never get back.
But he left, just the same. And when she needed him most, he wasn't there.
Not for her. Not for anyone.
The same year Elle died, Vincent walked away. He was the first to leave. Then Sasha, who was nineteen, shattered like glass when Elle's passing broke something deep inside her. Sasha ran—fleeing, as if the walls of the house held memories she couldn't bear.
Her sister's note still stung. "I can't stay here. I need to find my own way. Please, don't follow me."
Six years later, Julia hadn't heard from Sasha at all.
But it was Vincent's absence that had left the deepest hole in her heart. She hadn't been the same since. She couldn't even recognize the person she was before. The one who had laughed easily, loved deeply, and believed in forever.
Now all she had was this watch. And the echo of their lives before the breaking.
She looked down at the golden chain, the warmth of it in her hand.
"You've lived before," the man had told her. "When the time comes, you'll remember. When you're desperate enough... you'll know how to use it."
Desperate. That was her now.
She wanted to understand. She needed to understand why things had fallen apart. Why they'd all left. Why Vincent, Elle, Sasha—everyone—had drifted away, leaving her behind in this tangled web of time and memory.
Her fingers tightened around the pocket watch. There were too many pieces missing. Too many questions.
Her mother, now unconscious in the hospital bed. Sasha, still lost somewhere. Elle, never getting to live the life she was meant to. And Vincent—forever locked in the past, a ghost of what could have been.
Now, sitting here with the photograph of her mother's first love, she couldn't help but wonder—was this all connected? Was Victor tied to Vincent somehow? Were their lives somehow intertwined across generations, across lifetimes?
She looked back down at the golden pocket watch in her hand. The weight of it, the pull of the chain—it all seemed so significant now.
More than just a trinket. More than just a simple piece of jewelry. It was a key.
To what, though? To where?
You've lived before.
The words circled in her mind, growing louder. The weight of the past—her mother's love, Vincent's absence, Elle's death, Sasha's disappearance—was too much for her to bear.
She wanted answers, but everything felt tangled, too many pieces of a puzzle she couldn't solve on her own.
She tightened her grip on the watch, feeling a low hum pulse through her fingertips.
'The answers,' she thought.
The answers were buried somewhere in the past. Somewhere beyond the present.
Julia stood, the watch cold in her hand. The walls of the house felt heavier now. She could hear the echoes of her family's brokenness, of lives interrupted, of love lost and regained.
The past was waiting for her. And for the first time, Julia felt ready to face it.
"I can't keep living like this," Julia whispered, the words falling heavy in the air. "Please... take me back."
The world shifted.
Not violently. Not suddenly. But slowly, like the shifting of a dream. Light curled around her, warm and golden, the air thickening, wrapping itself around her like a cocoon. The watch in her hand hummed faintly, almost as if it were alive.
The floor beneath her seemed to dissolve. The walls bled into light, and everything she knew—everything she was—slipped away.
And the past called her home.