"The mind forgets what it can’t survive. But the heart remembers everything."

  ?? Song Suggestion: "Bury a Friend" – Billie Eilish

  The morning was quieter than usual, the gray clouds hanging low over the city like a shroud. Harrison stepped into his bookshop, the faint smell of damp earth mixing with the scent of leather-bound books. He wasn’t sure why it felt different today—why everything seemed slightly off, like he had missed a step, as if something wasn’t quite in pce.

  He ran his fingers along the edge of a shelf, straightening books, but his movements felt slow, almost deliberate, as if he was trying to convince himself that everything was fine. The shop was still, and the quiet was unnerving. The sounds of the outside world didn’t reach him here. And yet, something inside the shop—something invisible—pressed on him, making the walls feel closer than they should have been.

  He paused by the counter and turned to face the mirror hanging behind it. The antique piece was framed with gold, the edges fking, its surface cloudy with age. A reflection caught his eye, but when he looked, the image didn’t match his movement. The flicker of a figure—someone standing just behind him, too close.

  He spun around, heart hammering in his chest.

  Empty.

  He exhaled, trying to shake the unsettling feeling gnawing at him. It was nothing. It had to be nothing.

  Still, the coldness in the air didn’t lift. The shop felt colder than it had in years.

  His eyes scanned the shelves, and his stomach twisted when he saw it. The Architecture of Memory. The book he had just tucked into the back hours before. It was now lying ft on the counter, wide open, as if someone had left it there deliberately.

  He hesitated for a long moment before reaching for it, feeling the weight of it in his hand as if it were alive, its pages pulling at him. The words blurred in his vision. The book had been empty the st time he checked. Yet now, the pages were filled with new text—scribbled words, faint and frantic, written in a script he recognized. It was the same handwriting as the letter.

  Emilia.

  The word pulsed through him like a wave, a recognition that he couldn’t fully understand. He rubbed his eyes, the sensation of dizziness sweeping over him.

  The doorbell chimed, startling him. He looked up sharply, blinking away the disorienting pull of the text.

  There she was—Emilia.

  She stepped inside, her coat dripping with rain, her hair tangled from the wet wind outside. She looked at him, her expression cautious, almost unsure, as if she were standing in a pce she had never been, though she had walked through that door countless times before.

  “Sorry,” she said, her voice a little too soft. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  Harrison found his voice—just barely. “No, you’re fine,” he said, feeling the strange weight of her presence, the sense that this was something they had done before, but couldn’t remember doing. He stepped forward, moving toward the counter, but his hands felt unsteady, as though they belonged to someone else.

  She smiled faintly, though there was something too knowing in her gaze, something that hinted at a recognition neither of them could expin.

  Her eyes drifted to the book. “I saw you with that earlier,” she said quietly. “The Architecture of Memory.” Her fingers brushed the edge of it as if touching it would help her remember something important. “I’ve been dreaming about it. About this pce, too.”

  She stepped back, blinking as if trying to clear her thoughts, and Harrison’s heart skipped. A wave of familiarity swept over him. This wasn’t the first time they had shared this conversation. It was as if they had spoken these words before, in another life, in another time.

  “Have you?” he asked, his voice hoarse. “Been dreaming of the same things?”

  She nodded, her lips pressing together tightly. “Ashbourne. A fire. I see it in my sleep—over and over.”

  The name rang in his ears like a bell, louder than before, more insistent. Ashbourne. The pce in his dreams. The pce she kept speaking of. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

  Instead, he felt a strange compulsion to ask, “Do you remember… do you remember me?”

  Her gaze held his for a long moment. Her eyes were wide, searching his face like she was trying to recognize him through a fog. She seemed to be about to say something, but then she closed her mouth and looked away.

  “I don’t know,” she said softly. “But it’s like I’ve known you my entire life.”

  The tension between them was thick, palpable. It was like being on the edge of something, standing on the cusp of a memory just out of reach.

  There was a long pause before she spoke again. “I think… I think we have to find out what happened.”

  He nodded slowly, though part of him wanted to turn away, to shut it all out. But he couldn’t. There was no escaping it. The feeling, the pull, was too strong. Ashbourne wasn’t just a dream—it was a truth they had to face.

  The door creaked behind her. She turned, gncing over her shoulder toward the hallway outside, but when she looked back at him, her eyes were filled with something deeper—something that spoke of recognition, of lost time.

  “I’ll help you,” she whispered. “We can figure this out together.”

  Harrison felt his chest tighten. Whatever had been holding him back, whatever hesitation had lingered in his thoughts, was gone. In that moment, he knew she was right. The truth was waiting, and it was time to face it.

  ?? Read Next: Chapter 3: "Déjà Vu & Lost Time" - A single phrase slips from Emilia’s lips—words she shouldn’t know. Harrison’s world tilts. Is it really déjà vu… or something deeper?