Katherine's POV
I woke up with tears streaming down my cheeks. My chest was tight, breath shaky, like I'd just been pulled from a place I didn't want to leave, or couldn't.
The images clung to me like smoke. A dream... or something more?
I had been dancing.
Not in the village square, not in any place I could name. Somewhere strange, beautiful in a way that made my heart ache. The kind of beauty that feels borrowed from another time.
There was music, soft and echoing like it came from the sky itself. My feet moved on their own, drawn by it, or maybe by him.
He held my hand gently but firmly, like we'd done this before. Like we belonged in that moment.
Tall, dark hair falling over his eyes. Eyes the color of sky and sea, and sad. So, so sad.
"Lumine..." he had whispered, like it was a special name.
Me? My name?
The house around us glowed under a warm, fading sun. Arches wrapped in green vines. Marble beneath our feet. It felt sacred. Whole. Like a place lost to time, but still alive inside me.
Then... the fire.
So sudden. So violent.
The sky turned red. The heat made me feel as if my skin were melting. He stepped back, swallowed by the smoke.
"Lumine... remember me."
His voice echoed as he vanished into thick fog.
And then I was here. Awake. Crying. Remembering something I shouldn't be able to remember.
I wasn't there the night the fire swallowed everything.
My grandmother's home was far from the valley a fragile island of safety in a world that was crumbling. Quiet. Untouched by flames. Untouched by the screams that tore through the night.
But the fire still found me.Not in the heat or smoke, but in the silence that came after.
In the empty echoes of a house that no longer held laughter or light.
In the ash-strewn ruins where my parents once lived where their voices, their love, had been swallowed whole.
I never heard their screams.
Never saw the flames.
Only woke to a world colder than grief, colder than the winter night itself.
The villagers came like ghosts, faces heavy with pity and sorrow, helping me to understand what had happened, and piece together what was left ,stone by stone, memory by painful memory.
I didn't return right away. I couldn't.
I stayed at my grandmother's house for years, wrapped in a silence that even time struggled to fill.
They told me I was safe. That I had survived. But nothing about it felt like survival.
I grew older, but a part of me stayed frozen in that night, watching from a distance, too scared to go back, too shattered to face the place that had once been my entire world. The place that took away what mattered most.
When I finally had the courage to return, the walls were standing again, rebuilt by patient hands and heavy hearts.
But it wasn't a home.
It was a monument to everything I'd lost.
That house was never a home again.
It was much more of a broken cup that will never ever be the same again.
And neither was I.
I wiped my eyes and headed to the garden, needing the calm of morning like never before. Coffee in hand, fresh air, I sat for a moment, breathing in the familiar scents of flowers and earth. Enjoying the birds bright songs, and Luna being playful through the grass, leaping after butterflies like the world hadn't burned at all.
Later, I grabbed a corset and a dress I haven't put on for a while now. And made my way to the village to trade some vegetables and flowers for bread and a few coins.
The market was quiet, peaceful but my mind still tangled in the dream's shadow. I moved like a ghost through the stalls, exchanging soft smiles and goods without really being there.
Later on I settled into an old wooden chair near the square, lost in thought, there but not fully.
Then Aunt Mary appeared, as if called by the heaviness surrounding me. She settled beside me without a word, her presence steady like a warm hearth.
After a moment, she spoke softly, "You've had that look before... the one that says your heart's caught in something... something not quite finished."
I blinked back tears, hesitant but needing someone to understand. "I had this dream... I was dancing with a man, in a place I don't know. It was stunning, we looked happy, but then it caught fire all of a sudden."
I paused "He called me Lumine... it wasn't the first time i hear thay name, and told me to remember. With a sad tone, then he went into a fog."
Mary's eyes darkened, thoughtful. "That name carries weight, child." She went quite, then said
"Sometimes the past doesn't stay buried. It reaches through time and memory, through dreams and silence. It's waiting for you to remember. To reveal what's hidden."
"And remember child, dreams are just realities all piled on top of each other."
Her words felt like a gentle warning wrapped in comfort.
I looked at her, searching for answers in her steady gaze. Before she could say more, a shadow flickered at the edge of the square. Jade, watching us from a distance.
My heart tightened. The day shifted again, and with it, the feeling that nothing was as simple as it seemed.
Jade raised a hand and started walking over, his usual carefree grin tugging at the corner of his lips. "Thought I'd find you here," he said as he plopped into the chair beside me, nodding politely to Aunt Mary.
She smiled faintly and rose, murmuring something about bread to fetch before slipping away, leaving us alone.
Jade's gaze lingered on me for a moment longer than usual. His smile softened, eyes scanning me not with amusement, but with something quieter.
"You look different today," he said, voice low. "Not just the dress though, I don't think I've seen you wear that one before."
His eyes lingered a second, then flicked away politely. "It suits you. Brings out something… in you. Not in a bad way. Just… like it fits a part of you most people don't get to see."
I blinked, caught off guard by the honesty in his voice.
"And the braid's new too, huh?" he added, teasing gently to soften the moment. "You've been holding out on us."
A small, involuntary smile crept to my lips. "It's just an old dress."
"Maybe," he said. "But old things can still carry magic."
Then, as if he hadn't just unraveled something inside me, he leaned back with that familiar mischief, stretching his legs. And said "You wouldn't believe the chaos I passed through on the way here. Some fool in the east village tried to ride a goat through a market stall. I swear, if I had a coin for every ridiculous thing I've seen..."
I let out a soft laugh despite myself, the tightness in my chest loosening just a little.
He kept going, story after story, every one more absurd than the last. His hands moved with flair, his voice light and full of life, like he was trying to blow away the storm cloud sitting over me. And maybe he was.
Because every now and then, I caught him glancing at me from the corner of his eye, like he was checking if I was really laughing, or just pretending.
Like he knew something was off.
He didn't ask what was wrong. He didn't press. He just stayed, filling the silence with warmth and color and the comfort of someone who cared enough to sit with your sadness without naming it.
He was trying to cheer me up.
And I think he was worried. Not the loud kind of worry ,the quiet one, that lives behind a smile and settles into your bones when someone you care about looks a little too lost.
The kind of lost that doesn't always show up in words, but lingers in the way you stare a little too long at nothing, or how your hands fidget without realizing it.
When the sun dipped low, casting the square in honey-gold light, Jade stood and offered his hand with a grin. "Come on, I'll walk you part of the way. You've had enough stories for one day."
We didn't talk much as we walked, just the soft scuff of our boots and the distant hum of wind in the trees. But the silence between us didn't feel heavy anymore. Just... quiet.
At the old stone crossroad where the path split toward home, he paused. "You'll be okay," he said, not like a question, like a promise.
I nodded. Didn't trust my voice enough to answer. But something in my chest eased.
The sky was painted in fading pinks and purples when I reached the gate. Luna darted out from the bushes to greet me, and for the first time all day, I didn't feel like the world was pressing down on me.
I felt lighter. Not healed, not whole.
But lighter.