A few months later
The city had moved on. Seasons shifted, and the streets of Aurivelle carried a different rhythm now—familiar but changed, as if time had rearranged the melody. The cafés still hummed with conversation, the bookstores still smelled of ink and old paper, and the bridges still held quiet whispers of passing strangers.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, Oryn had settled into a routine again. Work, projects, the occasional exhibit. Life had returned to its steady pace. Yet, beneath it, something lingered—an unfinished sentence, a note left unread, a book that still sat on his shelf, untouched since that night.
But life had a way of circling back.
He hadn't expected the invitation. A colleague had mentioned it in passing, an event meant to bring creatives together—writers, artists, storytellers. The kind of gathering he usually avoided, preferring the quiet solitude of his own process. But something about this one had caught his attention.
A feature on a rising writer. Someone whose words had stirred something in people, whose stories carried a quiet ache that felt strangely familiar.
A name that, at first, had meant nothing to him.
But now, as he stood at the entrance of the gallery, the weight of it settled into his chest like a forgotten memory coming back to life.
Lana Vienne.
He hadn't known her name before. Not when she had been only ink in the margins of a book. Not when she had left words behind like breadcrumbs leading nowhere. But now, it was there, printed on the event program, spoken in murmured conversations around the room.
She was here. Somewhere in this space, just beyond the crowd, in a city that had once held them both as strangers.
Oryn exhaled slowly, fingers tightening around the edges of the program.
It had been months. A lifetime and a moment all at once.
And tonight, for the first time, he would meet her—not through words on a page, not through letters exchanged in the quiet corners of a café, but here, in the real world.
A story unfolding.
And this time, he wouldn't let it end before it even began.