(POV: Lucian & Nareth)

The rain had stopped hours ago, but the world still smelled of it—wet earth, quiet asphalt, and the faint metallic scent that clung to the night. Lucian stood by the studio window, his reflection staring back at him like a ghost. His eyes were swollen, not from crying, but from exhaustion—the kind that seeps into the bones.

Behind him, Nareth’s voice broke the silence.

“You’ve been standing there for almost an hour.”

Lucian didn’t turn around. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Nareth stepped closer, his footsteps soft but steady. “Neither could I.”

There was a pause—heavy, familiar, and filled with everything they hadn’t said. When Nareth reached for him, Lucian finally looked up. His reflection blurred with Nareth’s approaching figure, two images merging and separating in the glass.

“Why do you keep pushing me away?” Nareth asked, his tone rough. “You flinch every time I get near. What are you hiding from me, Lucian?”

Lucian’s throat tightened. He wanted to tell him. He wanted to spill everything—the nightmares, the missing memories, the flashes of a life that wasn’t his. But every time he tried, something inside him screamed don’t.

“I’m not hiding anything,” he said instead, too quickly.

Nareth’s jaw tensed. “You’re lying.”

The accusation struck deep, but Lucian didn’t respond. His hands trembled slightly at his sides.

Nareth exhaled sharply, the air thick between them. “You think I can’t tell? I’ve known you for years, Lucian. I know every rhythm in your breathing, every tell in your voice. You’re not the same person I used to know.”

Lucian turned then—slowly, like facing a wound. His eyes glistened, raw with truth he couldn’t voice. “Maybe I’m not.”

Something shifted in Nareth’s expression—hurt, confusion, fear. “What are you saying?”

Lucian took a step forward, his voice breaking. “I don’t know who I am anymore, Nareth. Every time I look in the mirror, I see someone else staring back.”

The words hung in the air, trembling like fragile glass. Nareth froze, unable to move, his mind racing to make sense of it.

“Someone else?” he repeated, barely above a whisper.

Lucian’s breath hitched. “It’s like… there’s another life inside me. Another person. And the more I try to remember, the more it hurts.”

Nareth’s heartbeat thundered. “Then let me help you.”

“You can’t.”

“I can try, Lucian!”

The desperation in his voice cracked the space between them. For a moment, Lucian saw it—the fierce devotion in Nareth’s eyes, the love that had never wavered, even as everything else fell apart.

Lucian reached out, his fingers brushing Nareth’s wrist. “If you stay, you’ll get hurt.”

Nareth held his gaze. “Then I’ll bleed with you.”

The words broke him. Lucian’s eyes closed, and for the first time in a long while, he let the tears fall.

Outside, the dawn began to rise—a pale glow stretching over the city, soft and merciless.

And in that fragile light, two souls stood on opposite sides of a truth neither of them could yet face.