Chapter 11: Don't Look Too Long
They walked side by side.
But never close enough to touch.
Between them stretched a silence too deliberate to be accidental.
Not heavy. Not angry. Just… charged.
Like the air before a storm.
Aria carried the weight of her newly filled storage like a secret she hadn't asked for. It pulsed quietly at her side—a growing space that answered only to her. A space that never felt full.
She kept glancing at the girl beside her.
Silver-blonde hair.
Clean movements.
Quiet hands.
Selene never spoke unless she had to.
Never reached.
Never smiled.
Just watched.
⸻
They reached the edge of town as the sun began to fold into the earth—casting long shadows and gilding broken rooftops in gold. The world looked too peaceful for what it had become.
Aria stepped over a cracked sidewalk, her boot scuffing the edge.
"Selene," she said suddenly, "how do you know so much?"
Selene's eyes didn't leave the path. "I survived longer."
"That's not an answer."
"No," Selene said softly. "It's not."
She kept walking.
⸻
Aria moved faster, catching up with her pace, frustration prickling at her skin.
"You said I died," she said, louder than she meant to. "That I sacrificed myself. Why would I do that? I'm not brave."
Selene stopped.
Turned, just slightly. Her voice was even.
"You are."
"You don't even know me."
Selene's gaze met hers.
"I do."
⸻
The words hung between them, fragile and impossible.
Aria stopped walking. She stood in the center of the ruined road, staring at the back of Selene's head.
"Then why don't I know you?" she asked.
Her voice cracked.
Selene paused a few steps ahead. The light hit her face at an angle—catching on the sharp line of her jaw, the faint scar at her temple. She looked like something built from grief and steel.
"Because you haven't remembered me yet."
Aria swallowed. The world felt thinner.
"…Do I want to?"
Selene's shoulders rose with a breath, slow and full. But she didn't turn around.
"I hope so," she said.
And that was the first time she sounded afraid.
⸻
They camped that night on the roof of an old insurance office, rust blooming across its logo like blood from a forgotten wound.
The sky overhead was bruised with stars—too many, too bright.
As if the universe was pressing in.
Somewhere in the distance: a sound. Not a scream. Not yet.
But something alive.
Something moving.
Selene sat with her back to the wall, blade resting across her lap like a memory. She didn't speak. Didn't look away from the edge of the rooftop. Watching. Always watching.
Aria lay on her side, eyes wide to the sky.
She'd stolen a thin blanket from the market, but it didn't stop the cold.
Didn't stop the thoughts, either.
"I feel like I'm dreaming someone else's life," she whispered. "Like I'm standing where she stood… saying what she might've said… but I don't know who she is."
Silence.
Then—barely audible:
"She loved too much," Selene said.
Aria blinked. "What?"
Selene's fingers curled tighter around the handle of her blade.
"She gave everything. Over and over. Even when it broke her. Especially then."
Aria turned her face toward Selene.
"And you?" she asked. "What did you give?"
Selene didn't answer.
But her jaw clenched.
And in the starlight, Aria thought she saw it—
the smallest tremor in hands that never shook.
⸻
Somewhere below, the world shifted again.
A groan of steel. A distant crash.
Not close. Not yet.
But it was coming.
Aria closed her eyes.
And tried to remember the girl she used to be.