Darkness swallowed her whole.
At first, there was nothing — no sound, no ground, no breath.
Only the silence of a world that had forgotten how to exist.
Then came the heartbeat.
Soft. Slow. Steady.
It was not her own.
A faint light bloomed ahead, wavering like a candle in the void.
She stepped toward it, and the world began to take shape — fragments of memory stitching themselves together.
The scent of rain.
The warmth of a hand she once held.
The echo of a laugh she thought she would never hear again.
"Lalin."
The voice was so close she almost broke.
Her knees weakened. Her throat burned with everything she could never say.
Standing before her was the one she had lost — or perhaps, the memory of him.
His eyes were the same: calm, deep, and endlessly kind.
But his chest glowed faintly, a pulse of dim light where his heart should have been.
"You shouldn't be here," he whispered. "This place takes what it remembers… and turns it into chains."
"I came for you," she said. Her voice trembled, but her resolve didn't.
"If this is the only place where I can find you, then I'll stay."
He reached out, but his fingers passed through her skin like smoke.
Pain struck her chest, sharp and sudden — her own heartbeat fighting against the illusion.
"You can't stay, Lalin." His eyes shimmered with sorrow. "I'm not alive anymore. But your heart… it still remembers. And that memory is your key. Don't lose it."
The world around them began to crack, shards of light breaking through the darkness.
Her tears floated upward, glowing like stars.
As his form faded, he whispered one last thing — a promise, or a farewell:
> "Find the flame. It will lead you back… to me."
And then, silence returned.
Lalin fell to her knees, clutching her chest where her heart still burned with that lingering warmth —
the proof that he was real.
The heart that remembers… still beats.