Darkness.
Light.
What was it truly?
It should have been eternal.
Yet, somewhere in that silence, warmth returned—not from the world they had left behind, but from the faint weight of another hand still clasped in theirs.
A tether—fragile but unyielding, pulling them back from the abyss.
Her eyes flew open.
She gasped, clutching her chest, expecting to feel the shattering impact of glass and bone. Instead, she felt the weight of blankets, the softness of a futon, the familiar creak of floorboards beneath her.
Confusion struck harder than any fall.
Her breathing came ragged as her gaze darted across the room. The soft paper lantern. The wooden desk. The window that overlooked a garden of plum blossoms just beginning to bloom.
No. This couldn't be.
She stumbled to the mirror on her wall, nearly tripping on her own trembling feet.
And froze.
Staring back at her was not the weary, broken woman she had become. Not the butterfly with tattered wings and hollow eyes.
It was a girl.
Seventeen.
Her hair was long, uncut and untouched by dye. Her eyes still carried light, not dulled by betrayal. Her cheeks bore the softness of youth, not the strain of sleepless nights.
The breath she drew shook her whole frame. Her hand trembled as she touched the reflection, afraid it would vanish like a cruel trick. But the girl in the mirror mimicked her every motion, her every sob.
Then she turned to the wall.
The calendar, pinned neatly, showed a date.
Twenty years earlier.
Her knees gave out. Tears blurred her sight, not of grief this time, but of overwhelming disbelief.
She had been shattered. She had fallen. She had died.
And yet—here she was.
Her chest rose and fell rapidly. A thousand questions flooded her mind, but one thought cut sharper than the rest:
She had been given another chance.
Another chance to live. Another chance to choose. Another chance… to not repeat the same mistakes.
And for the first time in years, the butterfly wept, not because she was broken, but because she had been reborn.
Across the city, thunder rolled faintly in the distance.
The sound made him stir. His breath came in quick, shallow bursts, as though he had been drowning and only now surfaced.
He opened his eyes to darkness, but not the kind that had greeted him before. This was the dim, familiar shade of his organized room.
The scent of rain drifted in from the half-open window, mixing with the faint mildew of old wooden beams.
He pushed himself upright, gripping the edge of the bed until his knuckles turned white.
This was impossible. He remembered. The headlights. The crash. The metal twisting, tearing through flesh and bone. The silence afterward.
And yet—he was alive.
No scars. No blood. Just his old, fit body.
He stumbled to the mirror leaning crookedly against the wall. The reflection nearly drove the air from his lungs.
It was not the man who had endured betrayal, who had carried storms in his heart until they destroyed him.
It was a boy.
Seventeen.
His hair was spraeled, his face softer, his eyes not yet hardened into ice. He reached out, pressing a trembling palm against the cool surface.
How could this be?
He laughed suddenly, a broken sound. Fate gave him a second chance?
His chest ached, but not from wounds. From the weight of possibility.
For years, he had lived under storms—betrayal, cruelty, emptiness. He had believed his end was inevitable.
But now, the rain outside did not sound mournful. It sounded like a song. A new beginning.
His hand clenched into a fist.
He despised the world—yet he felt remorseful.
Neither of them knew why they had returned.
Neither of them knew whose hand they had grasped in that dark void, or why it lingered faintly still—as if their very souls were bound.
But both felt it.
A pull. A weightless tug, subtle yet unshakable. As if somewhere in this wide city, someone else had awakened to the same impossible truth.
The butterfly who once fell.
The storm that once crashed.
Two souls, reborn.
Two strangers, destined to meet.
The seasons had reset.
The weather had begun anew.
And this time—fate would not let them walk alone.