Nestled in the folds of gentle hills and winding forest roads was a town too small to make news, and yet too full of stories to be forgotten.
The kind of town where the sun lingered longer on sleepy rooftops, and silence between raindrops carried whispers from the past.
Emily had grown up there. In a house that echoed with hymns and held the scent of old pages, cinnamon tea, and incense. She was the youngest, always humming, always dancing barefoot through puddles and poems.
The townsfolk knew her not just by name, but by the warmth of her laughter that always seemed to arrive before she did.
Lucas lived further out, past the bend where the old telephone pole leaned slightly toward the valley.
He was quiet. Reserved. The kind of boy whose footsteps rarely made sound but whose eyes noticed everything.
The kind of soul you would only ever find once if you were lucky.
They belonged to the same town, but not to the same world.
Not yet.
And neither of them knew that one ordinary autumn evening, under a harvest sky, everything would change.