Alex's POV
For a long time, I didn't move. I stared at the thyme crushed under my heel, the stars overhead unmoving, uncaring. Had it really happened? Aunt Mary's voice still rang in my head, low and steady like a prayer: You are not her only ghost.
But I knew it wasn't just a voice echoing in my mind. I had been there. In that room. In the flicker of candlelight, in the circle of salt and ash. She had seen me, not just seen, spoken to me. And she had known what I was.
I've seen many things in the years since I died, but nothing like that.
Not in this life.
Not in the others.
Because this time… someone reached back.
I looked toward the house. The ache in my chest hadn't dulled. It never did. But now it was sharper, like a blade that knew my name.
Lumine.
I still called her that in my mind sometimes. Katherine. Lumine. My girl. The girl who always came back without knowing why.
Each time, I waited. Each time, I watched her live a new story without the pages that came before. She grew up again. Smiled again. Bled again. And I stayed in the quiet between, like punctuation in a sentence she never got to finish.
I don't know why I stayed.
I don't know how I stayed.
There was no guide for what I became. No light, no voice, no gates to pass through. Just… her.
Maybe that's what tethered me. Maybe it was the bond. Or maybe it was just my choice.
I followed her into every life like a shadow not ready to fade.
I sat down on the grass, head in my hands.
"Was it wrong?
Was it selfish?"
Mary's words kept pulling at the frayed parts of me. "You may not be her only ghost? You think you're the only one who loved her enough to remain?"
I hadn't even asked that question before. Never dared. How silly I'm
But the truth is, I don't know how to cross. I don't know if I can. The veil didn't open for me. It never did. What if I missed my chance because I was too stubborn, too in love, too foolish to let go?
What if this is all I'll ever be?
Watching her. Longing for her. Hoping for something I'm not sure I have the right to want.
A ghost with a name no one remembers.
I pressed my palm to the earth, wishing it could burn. Wishing it would answer.
"She deserves peace," Mary said.
But peace wasn't what brought me back each time. It was the way she looked at the world. The way she reached for light even when she couldn't see it.
She made the world feel like it still mattered.Even when I didn't.
The night had thinned. A pale wash of dawn crept over the horizon, smudging the stars. Birds hadn't started yet, but the world was holding its breath.
How many times had I watched her sleep?
the way her hand would twitch in sleep, the way her eyes watered at songs she didn't remember… I used to think it meant something.
Now I'm not sure.
Maybe I was just a ghost clinging to patterns, trying to make meaning where there was only grief !!!
But when she cried in that dream, when she woke up reaching for me, that was real.
That was me.
And maybe that's why Mary called me there. Maybe the veil thinned because she reached finally.
The thought made my throat tighten. I didn't have a throat anymore, not really, but the ache felt just the same.
If there's a way for her to remember me, is there also a way for her to love me again?
Would she still want me, if she knew what I was?
I'm not the boy she danced with in another century. I'm not the man who died with her name on his lips. I'm not even sure I'm a person anymore. Just a presence. Just a feeling. Just a shadow stretching toward her across time.
But still… I'd give anything just to hear her say my name again.
The one only she ever used without fear.
"Alex," she used to say, like it meant home.
But that name… faded with time.
"I used to believe love was stronger than death.
But now I wonder if death is just love's echo, stretched too thin across time to ever hold shape again."
Still, I'll wait.
Still, I'll watch.
Even if she never remembers.
Even if I never cross.
Even if peace was never meant for me.
Because she still lives.
And I still love her.
That's enough for me.