Alex's POV
I don't remember how I died.
Only that I did.
Only that I broke a promise.
I was supposed to come back to her.
But I didn't.
One moment there was fire, steel, pain, then nothing.
Then silence.
I don't know how many centuries passed.
I don't know how many winters rotted the trees, and buried cities under moss and memory.
But I know the ruins. I know the earth.
Because that's where I woke up.
A wisp. A whisper of who I was.
No blood. No breath. Just cold.
The garden was gone, of course.
Swallowed by time.
But it still smelled of her.
Still carried the echo of her laugh in the stone, like a memory the world refused to erase.
I didn't roam kingdoms like the ghosts in stories.
I didn't haunt the battlefield or follow the sun.
Didn't howl from mountaintops or slip through walls...
I stayed where she had been.
Where we had been.
Where love had once been a living thing.
That's where she had laughed.
Where she had kissed me.
Where we made a life the world couldn't keep.
Some days I remembered her face perfectly.
Other days it slipped through me like water.
But I always remembered her warmth.
The way her hair caught sunlight.
The way she'd hum while brushing the petals of flowers with her fingertips,
childlike in the simplest joys. And her scent.
"That's the thing about promises made in love.
They don't die just because you do. They linger."
In the silence.
In the ruins.
In the aching spaces where the heart used to beat.
So I waited.
Through storms and snow, through the groaning of roots and shifting of seasons, through every whisper of the wind, through broken stones
I waited. Until fate had mercy on me.
Until… something changed.
The trees trembled that night.
The air felt suffocating.
The sky cracked open with a storm I couldn't feel but my soul did.
A child was born.
And somehow, I knew.
Not across towns or roads, but in the way the wind shifted toward the nearby village.
In the silence that followed.
I didn't know.
But I felt it.
Like a cool breeze. Like the past stirring awake.
I was drawn to her.
Not because I knew her.
Not because I remembered her.
But because something inside me, something old and aching
recognized something inside her.
I didn't know her name yet.
Didn't know her voice, her face, her soul, her dreams, but something inside me stirred.
For the first time in lifetimes, I felt drawn to something. To someone.
I followed it. I followed until i found the house nearby the forest. A woman and a man lived there, and their newborn daughter.
That's when I saw her again.
A baby, cradled in arms that weren't mine,
but should have been.
A girl with sun-colored eyes and warmth I hadn't felt in centuries, crying asking for safety, for love.
I didn't see Lumine.
But I felt something, I felt her soul.
Like a second chance.
Her name, I'd later learn, was Katherine.
But even before that, I knew
She would matter.
She didn't see me,Not yet.
But gods... she felt me. And so it began again.
I stayed. I mean how could I leave?
Something in her soul, so old, so painfully familiar clung to mine like it had never let go.
I watched her grow, day by day, season by season. It was quick, like life always is.
By five, she was a wildflower child a rebellion one, running barefoot through her family's garden, talking to trees, chasing butterflies and bugs.
She used to dance when no one was looking. Arms out, head tilted toward the sky,
spinning in circles, like the world was music and she was the melody.
She looked more and more like Lumine with every passing day.
The same Red hair flying in the wind.
The same curious tilt of the head and eyebrow lift. The same laugh that made the birds hush just to listen.
But it wasn't just that.
She knew me.
Children feel things adults forget.
The movement in the room.
The chill that doesn't come from wind.
The shadow that doesn't move with the sun.
And Katherine… she knew. Ir at least she felt me.
She'd pause in a play, glance toward me with that soft, knowing gaze. Though she couldn't see me, she stared straight through me.
She'd Sit in the grass picking petals, and talking to the air like she was never truly alone. Like someone is always willing to listen.
And she wasn't, i was there listening to her melodic voice, to laugh at her silly movements, admiring her like she was the only light left in a world I could no longer touch.
I was there.
I've always been there.
Not to haunt
But to protect.
To remember.
To wait.
"Because I had failed her once. And i swore never again!"
I'd made a promise, whispered it into her hair as the world burned around us, before i left her in that damn castle, that I'd survive, that I'd come back. That I'd protect her. That we'd live and die together, that we'd build our house again...
But I didn't fulfill any.
I died.
And she was left to face the ashes, the sorrow, the darkness, alone till it ate her.
So no, I didn't come back as a curse.
I didn't come back as vengeance in the shape of a man.
I came back as a love that didn't know how to die.
A vow too stubborn to be buried.
A promise too loud to stay quiet.
And because somehow, across centuries and silence, across the pain of death and loss, fate had brought us back together for a reason.
And this time, I'm not letting go. I'm not willing to lose.
Not after the centuries I spent chasing echoes of her voice.
Not after watching her grow, laugh, ache, all from this side of the veil.
Not when she reached for the air and I reached back, always inches away.
Not now.
Not ever.