As I watch Selene, her gaze still fixed on the decaying sky, my chest tightens. Three years. Three long years since I last laid eyes on her, since I held her close. Three years since she disappeared, her life rewritten in a blink of an eye, slipping away from me like smoke. The weight of my loss crushed me every day.

I spent every waking moment searching for her, the image of her face haunting me, tormenting me. I couldn’t breathe without her. I couldn’t think without her. She was my heart, my soul. And when she vanished, it felt as though something inside me fractured, something irreparable. I became obsessed with finding her, abandoning my other duties. I tracked down every lead, every whisper about alternate realities, about realms shifting and tearing. I burned through the years, desperate, frantic.

Cedric, my only true brother, and Theo and Nicholas, my closest comrades, all stood by me, but even they couldn’t understand the depths of my need. They knew why I was driven. They knew the love I had for her, the obsession. The bond between me and Selene runs deeper than mere duty. It’s a compulsion. A hunger. My whole life has been devoted to protecting her, yet I have never felt more of a need to do so than right now. A need to fix what I have broken.

But the woman in front of me is not the one I once knew. The girl who fought beside me, who laughed with me, whose spirit burned like a thousand suns, is gone. The Selene standing in front of me is a shadow of that woman. The fire in her eyes has dimmed to a dull ember, her soul fractured, muted.

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She is lost, we are both lost. I see it in her eyes. That confusion, that terror. The same confusion that I carry in my own chest. The weight of three years of separation. The burden of knowing that the woman I swore to protect… I failed. I failed her in more ways than one.

There’s so much I want to say. So much I want to explain. But the truth is, I don’t know if she’s ready to hear more. I don’t even know if I’m ready to face it. What happened to her, to her memories, to us? The destruction she caused in her absence… the world has rotted without her presence. The sky is dying, the sun decaying, everything around us becoming more and more hostile, as though the land itself is mourning her loss. And I am powerless to stop it.

I never wanted her to leave. If only she knew how much of the world around us is unraveling because of her choice. I know she needed to break free, to build something new. I can understand that part, even if I hate it. But to be gone this long? To have severed all ties, erased herself from reality? She and I were in the same situation, but why did she feel the need to escape? It doesn’t feel like her. It doesn’t feel right.

I know what I must do, but it terrifies me. The knowledge I have of how to bring her memories back is faint at best. The cost of it is… too much. Her life could be in jeopardy, and I would never risk her life. And yet… when I look at her now, I wonder: Have I already lost her forever? I push the thought aside, and convince myself to face the truth. I will get her back. I will get my Selene back.