56.

The rain had stopped.

Outside Alina’s condo window, the world had sunk into a gentle hush. The streetlights cast golden pools on the wet pavement, and the leaves swayed in a soft breeze. Inside, everything was still. The air between them was thick with the scent of quiet truths and long-held memories.

Caelan sat on the edge of her bed. Not close. Not distant. Just there, his hands resting loosely on his lap, his posture carefully calm. Alina was curled on the other side of the room in her armchair, a blanket pulled over her knees. Her eyes were puffy from crying, but the tears had dried. For now.

Neither of them spoke for a long while.

Caelan looked down at his hands. He breathed in slowly.

Then he spoke.

"I need to tell you something. The story you read... the one you dreamed... it wasn’t just a myth."

Alina did not react.

He continued anyway.

"I remember it. Not like a scholar remembers a story. Not like a reader remembers words on a page. I remember it the way someone remembers the smell of smoke in their hair. The way someone remembers the scream of someone they could not save."

His voice was steady, but his eyes betrayed something older. Something cracked and never mended.

"Will you believe me," he said quietly, "if I tell you I am the one who lost her?"

Her gaze finally lifted. Her lips parted slightly, but she said nothing.

"Will you believe me," he repeated, his voice just a breath, "if I say that I was there, in the Great Library of Min-Ho, when it all burned? That my partner was taken from me in the fire? That I screamed for her until my throat bled and still she never answered back?"

He closed his eyes.

For a moment, he was no longer the man she knew. He looked younger somehow. But also older. Like a soul that had aged beyond time itself, still trapped inside a body that remembered every moment it had endured.

"I watched the library crumble into flame. I heard the wood scream as the walls collapsed. And I stood there as if I was made of stone while everything I loved turned to ash."

The silence that followed was thick and reverent.

Caelan opened his eyes again. There was a gentleness there, one carved out of ruin.

"For centuries," he said, "I wandered this world. I saw cities rise and fall. I watched people speak languages I did not know. I learned to smile when I did not feel joy. I learned to hide my grief behind fine suits and wealth and empty conversations. And I waited."

Alina’s breath caught, almost imperceptibly.

"I waited for her. For the woman who had always been at my side. My equal. My shadow. My light. My fantasy."

His fingers tightened slightly on the fabric of his pants.

"You see, I was not born like others. I am not flesh alone. I was once a spirit. And she was too. A guardian spirit of a book. A rare book. A Paranormal Encyclopedia. One that held every truth of the unseen world. It was a book people feared. One they tried to destroy again and again. So they decided to destroy the spirit of fantasy. My lover."

A pause.

"And when they failed to destroy the words, they set fire to the building that protected it. The building that held me. The woman who stood beside me… she was not afraid. She believed in it all. She believed in me. She died there. I did not."

Alina swallowed hard, her blanket slowly slipping from her knees.

"I did not die," he whispered. "But I was changed. The fire twisted something in me. I became human. Or close to it. But I never stopped being what I was. I carried the words with me. I carried the loss. And I have spent lifetimes printing them again. The same encyclopedia. In different names. Different covers. Different languages. All so I would not forget. All so I could keep her memory alive."

He finally looked at her again.

"And now here you are."

Alina stared back at him.

"You have her voice when you laugh. You have her silence when you cry. You have her fire when you speak. And the moment you touched that dragon… I knew."

Her lips trembled.

Caelan stood then. Slowly. Carefully.

He did not approach her.

"You do not have to say anything. Not now. Not tonight. I know it is too much. I know it feels impossible. But I do not want to lie anymore. Not to you. Not to myself."

He walked to her window, gazing out into the misty lights.

"I spent all of those thousands of years alone. Not because I could not love again. But because I never saw her again. Not in any century. Not in any face. Until you."

The room fell into silence again, but it felt different now. Not suffocating. Not sharp. Just heavy with unspoken things.

Alina drew in a shaky breath.

Her voice was so soft, it barely reached him.

"And what if I need time?"

He turned to her then.

There was no disappointment in his face. Only the quiet acceptance of someone who had waited far longer than any mortal ever should.

"Then I will wait."

She looked away, the weight of his story pressing against her chest like a second heartbeat.

"You really believe I’m her?"

Caelan stepped forward just once, his voice gentle.

"I don’t believe it. I feel it. Like fire behind my ribs."

Alina wiped at her cheeks, still unsure what kind of tears they were.

He did not reach for her again. He simply stood there, watching her, and offering her the most dangerous thing of all.

A choice.

And then, with a slight nod, he walked back toward the door of her condo. His steps were silent.

But before he left, he looked over his shoulder.

"You don’t have to remember, Alina. Not yet. I will carry the memory for both of us. Until you’re ready."

He left her door open behind him.

And the rain began again outside, soft as ash, slow as time.