Lucien found himself drifting. His mind was unfocused and his eyes flicked across the empty space as though chasing a thought just beyond reach.
A revelation teased the edge of his mind and almost within his grasp... only for it to slip away like mist.
He exhaled slowly.
The third life in the mural had just ended. His third death.
No matter how he struggled, the outcome was fixed. It felt less like a choice and more like history carved in stone, replaying itself through his eyes in merciless first-person clarity. The past or whatever it was would not bend.
A soldier. A commander. A monster.
Three lives. Three deaths.
The memories had already begun to fade at the edges... But the pain, the struggle, the weight of each life...
They lingered. They were etched into him as something more than illusion.
Those lives whispered to him as if carrying a message he had yet to decipher.
Were they fragments of history? Or warnings from a future not yet written?
