First message
My hand lingered on the coffin lid, the carved sigils still slick with blood, whispering her name again and again until the syllables lost meaning, until it was nothing but breath torn from me. The air thickened, heavy as stormwater, and the stillness cracked with a gasp — sharp, wet, alive. My knees nearly buckled. I tore the lid open, half-mad with hope, and there she was, drawing breath like she’d been drowning for years. But no — no, this was wrong. Her face was smooth, unlined by the illness that had hollowed her. Her hair fell heavy, not the brittle strands I’d last brushed from her forehead. Seventeen. Seventeen, before she ever touched my hand, before she ever whispered she loved me, before she was mine. My chest seized. This wasn’t my love, not the woman I burned myself down to save. This was a stranger in her skin, a ghost pulled from a memory. My lips formed her name, but I couldn’t force the word past my throat.