I jumped from the precipice, and the wind rushed up to greet me—sharp, cold, biting through the thin fabric of my nightgown as the sea roared below. The scent of salt and damp earth filled my lungs, a brutal balm that almost made me feel alive. For one blessed moment, the world vanished. No time, no memory, no aching solitude—just the purity of falling. Then came the pain.

  It hit all at once, sharp and blinding—bones grinding, skin tearing, nerves alight with fire. I welcomed it. I drank it in like someone half-drowned clawing for air. But before the agony could anchor me to the ground, it slipped away. My body began to stitch itself together faster than I could bleed. And just like that, I was whole again.

  The sand clung to me, warm and red where it should have been soaked in blood. My breath came ragged, not from fear or exertion, but from fury. I should be broken. Dead. Finally free. But the curse held fast. I let my head fall back against the damp earth and closed my eyes, listening to the waves crash in their endless rhythm. “Another day cursed,” I whispered, the wind tearing the words from my lips and scattering them like ashes across the sea.

  Sunlight broke through the clouds overhead, too bright for a day like this. It cast the world in a golden hue, cruel in its beauty. I sat up slowly, brushing sand from my limbs as my nightgown clung stubbornly to my skin. The cliff loomed behind me, ancient and unmoved, as though mocking my futile attempt to escape.

  Turning to the stone, I raised a hand and summoned the magic that lived beneath my ribs. Warmth bloomed in my chest, flowing outward until it reached my fingertips. The ground answered with a slow, steady pulse, and a vine emerged from the cliffside, coiling gently around my wrist. It lifted me as if I weighed nothing at all, golden light humming around us both. I didn’t look down. I never did.

  Back on the bluff, the wind tugged at my hair as I stepped through the tall grass, its blades cool against my legs. The path I walked had long since been worn into the hillside, leading to the only place that ever felt steady beneath my feet. The oak stood where it always had—massive, twisted, eternal. Its branches reached toward the sky like arms that had forgotten how to hold. Moss clung to its bark in thick green patches, and the ground beneath it was soft with years of fallen leaves. I pressed my palm against the trunk, feeling the rough bark bite gently into my skin. This tree had seen everything. Before the fall. During it. After. It was all that remained of what I had once called home.

  Closing my eyes again, I let the magic rise. A soft golden glow spread from my hand, threading through the tree’s ancient fibers. I searched, not for power, but for a soul. His soul. But there was nothing. Just as there had been nothing yesterday. Or the day before. Or the day before that.

  So much power. So many gifts. And still, I could not find the only thing that mattered. I opened my eyes and let the glow fade, my hand falling to my side as something cold and restless stirred in my chest. But before I could retreat into grief, I felt it. A presence.

  I turned, and there he was. A boy lay nestled in the grass beneath the tree, head tilted back in sleep, sunlight tracing soft gold over his dark curls. His chest rose and fell in slow rhythm, calm and unafraid. I would have known those eyes anywhere—even closed. I would have known that face in any world.

  Ambrose. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My breath snagged in my throat as I stared at him, half-afraid he’d vanish if I blinked. He was unchanged. Not a day older. As if time had folded itself around him.

  How had he found me? How had he survived? Before I could form a single coherent thought, he stirred and blinked into the sunlight, squinting up at me with familiar chestnut eyes.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said with a sheepish smile, his accent as warm as summer wheat. “Didn’t mean to intrude. I saw this lovely tree and figured I’d rest a bit under her. Hope that’s alright?”

  My heart lodged somewhere between my ribs. That voice. That easy charm. It was really him.

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  “It’s alright,” I said softly, walking toward him. “She’s the oldest tree on this land.” Oldest in the world, I could have said. But I didn’t. Not yet.

  I sat beside him in the shade, letting the quiet settle around us. The breeze stirred the grass and carried the scent of wild herbs and sea salt. For a while, we just listened.

  “I’m Juniper,” I offered after a moment. “Juniper Blumen.” He sat up and reached out to shake my hand, his grip enthusiastic, unrefined. He hadn’t changed at all.

  “Ambrose. Don’t have a proper last name. Some folks call me Ambrose Walker, on account of me always movin’ around.” The nickname stung. Like a splinter from a world long gone. He had never known his family—not in the old world, not in this one.

  “Well, Mr. Walker,” I said gently, “you’re welcome to a real bed tonight, if you’d like. It’s better than sleeping on the ground, I promise.”

  His face lit up, childlike and genuine. “You serious? I haven’t slept in a real bed since... huh. I honestly don’t know.”

  As we walked back across the field, his steps practically bounced, and he hummed a tune under his breath. Something old. Something I almost recognized.

  “You seem familiar, ma’am,” he said as we neared the house. “Have we met before?”

  The question stilled my breath. I hesitated, then answered carefully. “Perhaps... in another lifetime.”

  He looked down at his shoes—once gray, now scuffed and brown with age. Something flickered across his face. A shadow of confusion. Of pain. He didn’t remember. Not fully. But something in him knew he was not what he seemed.

  We crossed the threshold into my small home. Handmade wind chimes clinked softly on the porch behind us, their song faint and familiar. Inside, the scent of simmering stew drifted from the kitchen. The walls bore signs of a life built slowly—wooden shelves, dried herbs, a few hand-drawn sketches framed with care.

  “It’s not much,” I said, “but it’s home. Food will be ready soon. The room at the end of the hall’s yours if you want to clean up.”

  Ambrose hovered just inside the doorway, his eyes scanning everything like a stray dog waiting to be chased off. Then he turned to me, his expression uncertain.

  “Why are you bein’ kind to a stranger like me?” I paused. The answer sat heavy on my tongue.

  “Because I know what it feels like to be alone. To carry something you don’t understand. To feel like you don’t belong anywhere.”

  His expression shifted. Something unspoken passed between us, and without another word, he turned and headed toward the spare room. I returned to the kitchen and stirred the stew, steam curling up from the pot like a ghost. The warmth of the stove filled the small space, but it didn’t touch the chill creeping into my bones. And then I remembered the drawing. My heart stopped. I had left it on the desk in the spare room—a portrait of Ambrose from the old world, one I’d sketched in charcoal, trying not to forget his face. There were others, too—portraits of everyone I had lost—but his had been left on top. I rushed down the hall, hoping he hadn’t seen it yet. But when I opened the door, he was already holding it.

  “Why do you have a drawin’ of me?” he asked quietly, eyes still on the page. “We just met.”

  The silence between us stretched like a thread pulled too tight. He looked up, and there was something fragile in his gaze now. Something old.

  “Are you like me?”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed, my voice soft. “Do you really not remember me, Ambrose? Is this the only life you know?”

  He hesitated, then looked down at his frayed shoes again. “I don’t know what I remember. I’ve always felt like something was off. Like this isn’t really who I’m supposed to be.”

  “We knew each other,” I said. “Before everything changed.”

  He gave me a pained, apologetic smile. “Guess I’d remember someone like you, wouldn’t I?” The ache in my chest tightened. I wanted to explain everything, to unspool the truth all at once—but it was too much. Too soon. So I tried another path.

  “Do you like stories?”

  He nodded. “Always have.”

  I smiled faintly. “Then I’ll tell you one.” I paused, collecting the fragments of memory that still bled when I touched them.

  “There used to be eight realms, each shaped by the whim of a god or goddess. They gave their children gifts—gifts that took on different forms, different powers. No two ever exactly alike.”

  “And we came from one of these realms?”

  “Yes. Amathara. Realm of life and creation. The goddess who ruled it—Gaia—was as fierce as she was kind. Those born of her blood were marked by gifts of growth, healing, renewal.”

  His eyes were wide now. “And us? What did we get?”

  “We were something different,” I said. “What the old world called Fullvalda. A power that wasn’t meant to be given lightly. Most only came once in a generation.”

  His brow furrowed. “But if we can’t die, how come there aren’t more of us? Where did they all go?”

  I met his eyes and didn’t answer right away. Because some questions still echoed in the dark corners of my mind. And not even the gods had given me the answers.