CHAPTER THREE -The Man Who Remembers

Cassian

It was different this time because I wasn’t running, and neither was she. We stood in the middle of the forest, separated by only a few feet of damp earth as the trees rose around us, impossibly tall, their branches twisting together overhead until the sky disappeared. Everything felt strangely still, as though the forest itself were holding its breath.

I had been here before, more times than I could count, in the same forest with the same pull in my chest and the same woman waiting for me on the other side of it. For years, I had chased her through these woods, always arriving a moment too late because she was always there, always just beyond my reach, and every time I got close enough to see her, she disappeared.

But tonight, she didn’t disappear.Instead, she took a step forward, and I held my breath as if breathing might make her change her mind, then she took another step, bringing her closer. For years, I had watched her from a distance, a silhouette between the trees, a shadow disappearing around a corner, and she had never spoken, not even a word, while I had never seen her face.

Until now. She lifted her head, and I finally saw her face, and everything inside me went still because it was her. I didn’t need a name or an explanation because I knew her, I had known her in ways that time should have made impossible. She looked different, of course, her hair was different, her features softer, and she was younger than I remembered her being, but her eyes—those hadn’t changed.

I took a step towards her and her lips parted as she said something I couldn’t hear. I moved closer and strained to catch her words but the sound was carried away by the rushing wind. She parted her lips again as though trying to say it a second time but before I could hear her her expression suddenly changed. Something flashed across her face and I couldn’t tell if it was fear or recognition, perhaps both.

And then—I woke.

My eyes opened to darkness and for a moment I didn’t move. I stared at the ceiling while listening to the quiet hum of the house and the trees surrounding it. Somewhere outside the wind moved through the branches and carried a cold breeze into the room.My breathing was steady but my heart wasn’t. I closed my eyes again but her face was still there. Not a silhouette or a blur this time. Her.

For the first time I could remember every detail. Dark hair falling loosely around her face and soft against her skin. Eyes that were impossible to forget. Deep and warm and familiar in a way that made something inside my chest ache. Her nose was small and her lips were slightly parted as though she had been about to say something before I woke.

She looked younger this time. Different and yet somehow exactly the same. Those eyes.I had known them for longer than I cared to remember.

I sat up slowly and ran a hand through my hair. It fell messily across my forehead and looked dark against skin that seemed younger than the years behind it. My gaze caught my reflection in the mirror across the room and I stared at the face staring back at me. Sharp jaw, tired eyes. A face that had remained almost unchanged for longer than it should have. I looked away. “Finally,” I said under my breath. The word left my mouth before I could stop it. I had been waiting for this. I just hadn’t expected it to feel like fear.

I had learned not to dismiss the dreams. That lesson had cost me too many years and too many mistakes and too many graves. I got out of bed and crossed the room with the floorboards barely making a sound beneath my feet.The house was silent at this hour and everyone else was asleep but sleep had become a luxury I had stopped expecting.

I lit the lamp on my desk and its warm glow fell across the mess covering almost every available surface. Old maps, territory records, handwritten accounts and journals belonging to people who had died long before I was born were scattered across the desk.

I pulled one of the oldest volumes towards me and the leather cracked softly beneath my fingers.I didn’t open it because I didn’t need to. I knew exactly what was inside.Three accounts. Three lives. Three times I had found her and three times I had lost her, and now there was a fourth.My fingers tightened around the edge of the book. I had spent years trying to understand why. Why her? Why me? Why did time keep taking her away and leaving me behind?

I had searched through records from territories that no longer existed. I had spoken to elders who thought I was chasing a ghost. I had spent years studying stories everyone else dismissed as folklore. Every answer seemed to lead to another question, and every dead end only made me more determined to keep searching.

The Northern elders were the only ones who had ever taken the matter seriously. Alaric most of all. He had never laughed when I told him about the dreams. He had never called me mad or dismissed what I had seen as meaningless. Instead, he had helped me search through records no one else thought were worth reading and if anyone could understand what tonight meant, it was him.I made a mental note to find him first thing the sun comes out.

In two days, I would leave for the Southern territory. Officially, I was going for work. The leadership training and negotiations that had brought several packs together. It was an important assignment, one I normally would have taken seriously but for once, the journey itself didn’t interest me.

All I could think about was a pair of eyes I had spent lifetimes trying to find and the question I was afraid to ask myself.What if this time, the dream wasn’t warning me?What if it was telling me I was finally close?