The first thing Eunha felt was sunlight.
Not fire.
Not chains.
Not the sting of memory.
Just warmth.
She blinked against it, lying on coarse linen sheets. The smell of pine and wild honey drifted through the open window. Birds sang. The world, impossibly, was quiet.
For a moment, she thought she was dead — until she heard the faint, rhythmic clatter of hooves on cobblestone somewhere beyond the cottage walls.
She sat up slowly. Her hands were smaller — delicate, unscarred. Her reflection in the mirror opposite her bed showed a young woman in plain linen, hair tied back, eyes softer, unfamiliar.
No mark on her wrist.
No sigil.
No Axis.
Just… Eunha.
---
⚜️
Outside, the village was alive.
Children chased each other through the dirt road, vendors shouted prices for fresh fruit, and farmers loaded grain into wooden carts bound for the city gates.
No soldiers.
No banners.
No imperial insignia.
A world without an empire.
Eunha walked through it in silence, heart pounding. Every smile she saw felt wrong — too bright, too easy. The people moved like they'd never known fear.
She stopped by a fountain, staring at her reflection in the water. The face that stared back was hers, but the eyes looked empty — like a book with the first chapter torn out.
Someone tapped her shoulder.
"You're standing in my bucket," said an old woman with a grin. "Unless you're planning to water yourself?"
Eunha stepped aside, murmuring an apology.
The woman laughed. "First day in town? You've got that lost look."
"Something like that," Eunha said faintly.
"Welcome to Haneul Province," the woman said, dipping her bucket. "Quiet little corner of the world. Not much happens here — thank the heavens."
Heavens.
Eunha almost laughed.
---
⚜️
She spent the rest of the day wandering — as if trying to prove to herself that this peace was real.
By dusk, she'd found work at a small bookshop near the square. The owner, a frail man with spectacles too big for his face, offered her a room upstairs and a meager wage.
"You read?" he asked.
Eunha smiled faintly. "I used to."
That night, as rain whispered against the roof, she sat by the window and tried to write her name on a scrap of parchment.
Her hand trembled. The letters didn't feel right.
When she tried to remember her surname, her mind hit a wall.
Not emptiness — something heavier, like a door locked from the inside.
She whispered into the darkness, "Who am I?"
And for the first time in countless lifetimes, no one answered.
---
⚜️
Weeks passed.
Life settled into a rhythm: sweeping the floors, arranging books, serving tea to travelers. Eunha found a strange comfort in the monotony.
Yet sometimes — when the sunlight hit the shelves just so — she'd see things that weren't there. A flash of steel. A burning library. A man's hand reaching for hers through the smoke.
And every time, her heart would ache for a reason she couldn't name.
Then one evening, a storm rolled in.
The bell above the bookshop door rang as the last customer of the day entered.
He wore a dark cloak dripping with rain, and when he pushed back his hood, Eunha's breath caught.
Tall. Scar across his cheek. Eyes gray as winter.
Something deep inside her knew him — not as a stranger, but as a memory.
"Are you open?" he asked, voice calm, low.
She nodded numbly. "For a little while longer."
He glanced around, then picked up a book from the nearest shelf. "You keep history here?"
"Some," she said cautiously. "But most of it's fiction."
He smiled faintly. "Sometimes, fiction is just history that no one believes."
---
⚜️
As he flipped through the pages, Eunha studied him. Every gesture — the way he frowned slightly when reading, the way he traced the spine with his thumb — felt painfully familiar.
She forced herself to ask, "Do you live in this province?"
"I don't live anywhere," he said. "I travel. Looking for something."
"What?"
His eyes met hers. "A promise I can't remember making."
Eunha's pulse skipped.
"Do you have a name?" she asked quietly.
"Jiheon."
The word hit her like a spark against dry leaves.
Jiheon.
He said it without hesitation, without recognition — but she heard the echo of another lifetime in it.
---
⚜️
That night, he stayed until the storm passed.
They sat by the fire, exchanging small talk about the weather, the price of ink, the difficulty of finding good paper — things that meant nothing and everything at once.
When he finally stood to leave, he paused at the door. "You said your name was Eunha, right?"
"Yes."
"It suits you."
She smiled faintly. "Do I look like someone you know?"
He hesitated. "No." Then, after a pause: "But it feels like I should."
The door closed behind him.
Eunha stood in silence, her heart pounding with an ache that had no name.
She went to the window, watching him disappear into the rain.
And for the briefest second — as lightning split the sky — she saw it.
A faint mark glowing on her wrist.
The sigil of the Axis.
Flickering.
Not gone.
Sleeping.