The name arrived folded into a white silk ribbon, slipped beneath her door before dawn.
She recognized the handwriting instantly.
Kai Ren.
Except no one in this world should have known that name.
Her heart stuttered.
She unwrapped the silk and read the note:
If you remember this name, then you remember more than you should. Meet me where time first broke — tonight. Come alone.
No signature.
No seal.
But it didn't need either.
Only one person had ever spoken that name aloud in this timeline — and he was supposed to be gone.
That evening, the Emperor was nowhere to be found.
The guards said he had ridden out at sunset, alone, without notice.
Eira didn't ask questions. She simply followed.
She knew where he would be.
She remembered.
The old watchtower by the river.
The place where the dream had first pulled her through time.
The first place she had met him — not as an emperor, not as a stranger — but as Kai Ren.
The tower was nearly gone now, half-swallowed by ivy and time.
But inside, the air shimmered faintly, like memory suspended in gold.
She stepped through, breath held tight, every part of her bracing for the impossible.
And there he was.
Not dressed in robes of a ruler, but in the plain dark coat of a man she once loved in another life.
His hair was shorter. His face a little older.
But the eyes?
Still him.
Still Kai Ren.
Still hers.
"You're not supposed to be here," she whispered, voice trembling.
He smiled — that half-crooked smile she hadn't seen in what felt like centuries. "Neither are you."
Tears welled before she could stop them. "How did you remember?"
"I didn't," he said. "Not fully. Not until recently."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a watch — cracked, gold, modern.
Her watch.
The one she'd lost the night she fell through time.
"It started ticking again," he said. "Right before I started seeing the dreams. Of us. Of… before."
She took it from him, hands shaking. The second hand moved slowly, unnaturally — as if counting something other than time.
"I tried to let go," he whispered. "Tried to be who I was meant to be here. But the truth kept pulling me back."
"And now?" she asked, almost afraid.
"Now I remember who you are. And I remember who I am. Both of me."
They sat in silence for a long while.
Rain began to fall outside, the same way it had the night she arrived in this world.
Only now, she wasn't lost.
And he wasn't a stranger.
"What happens if they find out?" she asked.
"They already have," he replied. "The council knows. The dreamwalkers know. That's why the veil is thinning. They're trying to pull us back."
"Then we'll fight."
He looked at her, searching her face like it was a page he hadn't finished reading.
"No," he said softly. "We'll choose."
Outside the tower, time folded gently.
An old monk knelt at a shrine, lighting a single candle.
He spoke only one word into the wind:
"Ren."
The name didn't belong in this era.
But it echoed anyway.
Back inside, Eira looked at Kai and felt it — the impossible weight of two timelines pressing in from all sides.
"We can't exist like this forever," she said.
"I know."
"So what do we do?"
He took her hand and placed it over his heart.
"When the moment comes, we'll choose."
She looked at him. "But what if it tears us apart?"
His reply was barely a breath:
"Then we'll find each other again."