The scent of moss and stone filled her lungs before she even opened her eyes.
It was cold unforgivingly so. Not the sharp cold of winter air, but the kind that clung to the bones, like something that had waited a long time in silence to be remembered. When her eyelids finally parted, the light that greeted her was dim and silver-blue, as though the world itself had forgotten how to burn with warmth.
She lay on a stone slab inside what seemed to be a hall tall, narrow, and crumbling with age. Vines curled around the pillars like the fingers of time refusing to let go. The ceiling had cracked open above her, revealing a sky dusted with grey clouds and a single streak of lavender light that spilled across her pale gown.
She sat up slowly. Pain tugged behind her eyes, but not from an injury. It was something deeper. A hollowing absence.
Her name.
She didn't know it.
Her breath caught as she pressed a hand to her chest. Her heartbeat was there steady, real but her mind echoed with nothing but quiet.
Then came the voice. Faint at first. A whisper from the edge of the wind.
"You are awake."
She turned swiftly. No footsteps had come. No presence had stirred the air. And yet there, beneath the ruined archway on the far side of the room, stood a figure.
Tall. Still. Cloaked in a black so absolute it seemed to drink the light around it.
His face was veiled in shadow, even though light touched the wall behind him. He stood not on the stone, but in the deepest part of the room's dimness where the light never dared fall.
"Who are you?" Her voice cracked. It sounded foreign even to herself.
The figure didn't move. But his voice carried again, quiet as mist.
"You have many names. But you've forgotten all of them."
She stood, legs trembling, arms cold with gooseflesh. Her bare feet made no sound on the stone as she took a cautious step toward him.
"Do you know who I am?" she asked.
The figure inclined his head.
"I am your shadow."
The words struck her with a strange ache. Not fear though perhaps she should have been afraid. But a deep, wordless sadness bloomed in her chest, and the silence that followed was heavier than stone.
She whispered, "Why can't I remember?"
He stepped no closer, but the shadows that clung to him pulsed once like the beat of a heart.
"Because memory is the price you paid to live again."
Her hands clenched at her sides. "Live again? What do you mean?"
But he didn't answer.
Instead, he turned, the folds of his cloak shifting like smoke, and began to walk through the shadows of the ruined corridor beyond.
A voice whispered faintly in her mind not his, not hers, but something older.
Do not forget the shadow. Or you will forget yourself.
She followed.
They passed through shattered halls and hollowed rooms. Each stone seemed to hum with the memory of what it once was a castle, yes, but more than that. A place of stories. Of light, long since swallowed by time.
The sky outside had grown dimmer. Twilight was falling, and with it, a hush that pressed against her skin like velvet.
"I don't even know where we are," she murmured.
The shadow paused.
"You do. You simply forgot."
She caught her reflection in a broken mirror leaning against the hallway wall. Her face was smooth and pale, eyes silver-grey like the early moon. Hair long, tangled, and nearly white in the soft light. Something about that reflection made her throat tighten.
There was grace in her, and sorrow.
She turned away from the mirror and back to him. "What am I supposed to do?"
"Remember."
They stopped in what had once been a garden.
It was overgrown now, the stone path fractured with weeds and roots. But violet flowers bloomed between the cracks luminous in the dusk, their petals open wide as if drinking in the last of the day.
She knelt, fingers brushing the petals. They pulsed gently with a glow that didn't come from the sun.
"Do you remember these?" the shadow asked softly.
She shook her head. "No. But… they feel like mine."
"They were."
He stepped to the edge of the garden, where the light could not follow.
She looked up at him, truly seeing him for the first time not as a monster or specter, but as a man whose presence made the darkness seem gentler. He stood still, watching her without watching. And in the hush between them, she could hear her own heartbeat.
"Will I remember everything?" she asked.
"You will remember what you need," he said. "And when you are ready… the rest."
She lowered her gaze.
"And if I never remember you?"
A pause. The wind stirred the flowers.
"Then I will remind you," he said, "as many times as it takes."
They slept that night beneath the fractured dome of the castle. She curled beneath a worn cloak he had given her black, trimmed with threadbare silver and though he sat only a few paces away, he did not close his eyes.
She watched him for a long time through half-lidded eyes.
Even in stillness, he did not vanish. Even in silence, he was there.
Something about that comforted her in a way no memory could.
She didn't yet know his name.
She didn't know her own.
But in that quiet, forgotten ruin, surrounded by violet light and long-dead echoes, a flicker of warmth grew inside her.
Morning came slowly, slipping through the ruins like a hesitant breath. The sky above the cracked ceiling had turned pale gold, warming the stone ever so slightly. She stirred beneath the old cloak, the scent of dust and moss now mixed with something fainter lavender, perhaps, or memory itself.
She sat up and found the shadow still there, sitting with his back against the broken wall, unmoving.
"You don't sleep," she said, brushing hair from her eyes.
"I do not dream," he replied.
"Have I always known you?" she asked.
"In every life," he said, voice calm as still water.
She wrapped the cloak tighter. "Why did I forget you?"
"Because to remember love, you must forget what broke it."
The words sank into her like sunlight through water, slow and deep. She didn't know whether to cry or laugh, so she did neither.
Instead, she rose and looked toward the opening in the wall. Beyond it lay more ruins, and beyond that, a forest veiled in morning mist. She felt no fear. Only the pull of something unfinished.
"Where does this path lead?"
"Forward," he said. "And backward."
She looked at him over her shoulder. "You're not very good at straight answers."
"I was your memory once. I've learned to speak in riddles."
They walked.
The forest swallowed them gently, the mist curling around her ankles like soft hands. Branches arched overhead, dripping with dew. Birds did not sing here. Even the leaves whispered in hushes.
"How long was I gone?" she asked.
"Long enough that your name was forgotten. But not so long that the world forgot the light you once were."
Her steps faltered. "I was… light?"
"You still are. But it's buried under what they did to you. What you did to yourself."
She didn't ask more.
As they walked, her hand brushed against a low bush of violet petals. One stuck to her skin. She stared at it. It pulsed faintly alive with something more than life.
"Those flowers grow where sorrow lingers," he said. "They're born from hearts that tried to let go and failed."
She placed the petal in her cloak pocket.
They came upon a clearing, and at its center stood a pool of water, still and black as onyx. She approached it cautiously.
"What is this?"
"Memory," he said.
"Will I see mine?"
"If you're ready."
She knelt. The surface was perfect. Unmoving.
Then a ripple spread. Slowly, shapes formed a girl in a silver dress, standing beneath stars. A man cloaked in night, kneeling before her. Tears on her cheeks. Blood on his chest.
She gasped and looked away.
"It's too much."
"You need not see it all at once," he said. "Truth comes like the tide."
"Did I kill you?"
He didn't answer at first. Then:
"You made a choice. I don't regret dying. Only leaving you behind."
She stared at her reflection, warped by the ripple.
"I was cruel."
"You were afraid. Power and fear are twins."
She stood and turned to him.
"Why follow me now?"
"Because in every life, I vowed I would."
"Even if I forget again?"
"I will wait. I will find you."
Something inside her broke and mended at once.
"I don't remember your name," she whispered.
"You named me once," he said, stepping forward. "Not in words, but in what you saw when you looked at me. That is enough."
They stayed by the pool until twilight.
And in that quiet place, she whispered into the dark, "Then I name you again. My shadow."
He bowed his head.
She took his hand. Warmth passed between them not from skin, but from something deeper.
The stars emerged, one by one, and neither of them let go.