The air snapped like a broken wire.
Hana instinctively stepped in front of Lucien as the light around them dimmed. The golden horizon that had just begun to form shimmered and fractured, like a promise on the verge of being broken. The world had given them a taste of peace only to wrench it away.
Then came the voice again. That same haunting, disembodied call:
"Lucien… Hana…"
It wasn't hostile. Not like the Variant's voice had been. This one trembled not with rage, but sorrow. Longing. Regret.
Lucien's fingers curled tighter around Hana's hand. "That voice…"
Hana's gaze flicked toward the silhouette forming in the distance. The light thinned like mist parting to reveal what shouldn't exist, something tethered to another life, another truth.
A boy stood alone in the shifting haze.
Barefoot. Pale. Dressed in a white tunic that looked stitched from dreams. His hair was black, windswept, and his eyes were the same golden hue as Lucien's, but far older. Far lonelier.
Lucien's heart stopped.
"No…" he whispered. "It can't be."
The boy took a slow step forward. "You left me there."
Flashback – The First Shatter
The first cycle. The forgotten one. Long before Hana's name had ever passed through Lucien's lips, there had been another timeline.
Another life.
Lucien had once made a different choice.
In that first incarnation, Lucien had been a guardian not of worlds or timelines, but of something older: a gate between the mortal world and the Forgotten Path.
He hadn't fallen in love with Hana in that life.
He had been her executioner.
And the boy…
The boy was the fragment of a promise made in blood.
Present – Between Realms
The child stood no more than twenty feet away now, yet his presence made the air crackle with static.
Lucien released Hana's hand slowly and stepped forward, the weight of unspoken memories dragging in his chest.
"Who are you?" Hana asked, though she already knew.
"I'm the one who remained," the boy said softly. "The one who bore it all. While you both… forgot."
Lucien's breath caught. "You're… the First."
The boy nodded. "You sacrificed me to protect her. And then you erased me. Buried me beneath every rebirth, every rewritten moment."
Hana stepped closer. "That wasn't.."
"I don't hate you," the boy interrupted. "I envy you."
His voice cracked. "You've got to forget. I didn't."
Lucien felt the old weight return, the heavy guilt he thought he had finally laid to rest. But this wasn't just a memory. This was a being. A shard of himself, lost in the timeline that was meant to never exist.
"I didn't forget you," Lucien said. "I buried you. Because if I remembered you… I wouldn't survive it."
The boy smiled faintly. "And yet, here I am."
Hana's Perspective
Hana stood still, heart racing.
She understood now. Every time Lucien woke up from his dreams in a cold sweat, every time he looked like he was fighting something deeper than memory, it was this.
This forgotten version of him.
This child wasn't a ghost. He was a living embodiment of the sacrifice Lucien made to save her in the first timeline. A life snuffed out before it could live.
Hana felt a sharp pang in her chest. "What do you want from us?"
"I don't want anything from you," the boy said gently. "I just want to be seen."
The Collapse Begins
Suddenly, the horizon shook.
The realm between timelines began to distort violently buildings from other lives crumbling into view and vanishing again. Streets Lucien had once walked with Hana. Battlefields. A shrine. A cliff where a younger Hana had jumped, thinking she'd never see him again.
It was all bleeding together.
"It's not him," Lucien said quietly. "It's the realm. It's unstable."
The boy nodded. "Because I'm not supposed to be here. I'm a fracture. A contradiction. And now that you've remembered me… the realm is collapsing."
"Then we have to leave," Hana said, pulling Lucien's hand.
But the boy held out his hand. "If you leave now, I disappear. I dissolve into nothingness again. Forgotten."
Lucien froze.
Hana turned to him, alarmed. "Lucien. We have to go he's not real."
"He is," Lucien whispered. "He's more real than either of us."
The boy's golden eyes shimmered with something that looked like tears.
"Lucien," he said. "I remember the way you used to smile. The way you promised me, it would all make sense one day. You told me I was your reason for fighting. And then… You erased me."
The Impossible Decision
Lucien's knees hit the ground. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I was weak."
The boy knelt before him, pressing his forehead against Lucien's. "You don't need to save me. I just wanted to know that I mattered."
Hana watched silently. Something inside her shifted.
She'd been so focused on breaking the cycle, on rewriting their fate, that she'd ignored the shadows in Lucien's heart, the people he had once been. The battles he had fought before her.
This… this boy was part of Lucien, too.
And to move forward, they couldn't leave him behind again.
A New Beginning
The realm twisted one last time.
A doorway opened behind them a pulse of pure light, leading back to the world of the living. Back to reality. They could start again. Together. Finally free.
Lucien turned to Hana. "We can take him with us."
Hana hesitated. "How? He's… not of this world."
"He's part of me," Lucien said. "Maybe that's enough."
The boy looked up at Hana, unsure. "I don't want to hurt you."
She knelt beside him. "Then don't. Live. Not as a ghost but as someone real."
Lucien reached into the boy's chest, light bursting from his palm, and drew out a thread of soul, a glowing filament that pulsed with the first life he ever lived. He pressed it against his chest, and the boy dissolved into him.
Not in memory.
Into wholeness.
The world shuddered again, but this time, it didn't collapse. It realigned.
Lucien stood, eyes filled with light and sorrow.
Hana took his hand. "Is it over?"
Lucien nodded slowly. "The cycle is broken. The fragments are whole."
But just as they stepped through the doorway back into the waking world a figure watched from the shadows of the collapsing realm.
Tall.
Eyes like ice.
Lips curled into a smirk.
"I guess it's my turn now."