The villagers called her the ghost-child. A girl who shouldn't be touched. A girl who saw too much.
Aira Serenth sat alone on the stone steps of the abandoned shrine, the morning sun tracing gold into her long, dark hair. Her fingers were folded tightly in her lap—gloved, always. Not out of modesty, but necessity.
If she touched someone's skin, even by accident, she would see their past.
And if she chose to, if she focused—she could live it.
"Fifteen minutes," her grandmother had once whispered, the only person who had ever dared to love her. "Never longer, Aira. Time is a jealous god. It will trap you if you're greedy."
But Grandmother was ash now. Burned during the fever fire two winters past. And Aira had lived alone ever since.
A sudden crunch of gravel snapped her from memory. She turned.
It was Joren, the butcher's boy. His eyes narrowed at her from the road, basket swinging at his side. He never said anything to her directly anymore, not since the incident with his father. But his glare said enough:
Witch. Curse-bearer. Don't come near me.
Aira lowered her gaze and let him pass. She was used to it. No one wanted a girl who could read their pain with a touch. No one wanted a girl who walked the corridors of yesterday like they were her home.
But today was different. There was a tremor in the air. A faint hum beneath the wind, like the woods themselves were whispering.
And then she felt it.
A hand.
Not in the flesh—but in her mind. Cold. Bloody. Reaching.
Aira gasped and stood. Her head spun as a vision sparked across her vision, brief as a lightning flash: a man collapsing in the trees. A torn cloak. A gash across his shoulder. Eyes like fire, burning even in pain.
The vision vanished.
She shouldn't follow it. She knew she shouldn't.
But her feet were already moving.
—
The forest smelled of moss and memory. Aira moved through it like shadow, swift and unseen. She crested a ridge near the stream—and stopped.
There he was.
Crimson stained the earth beneath him. His chest barely rose, but his hand—the hand she had seen—was reaching toward the sky, fingers twitching.
Aira's breath caught. He was real.
And dying.
She knelt beside him, her hands trembling. His hair was matted with sweat and blood, his jaw rough with stubble. Yet even in ruin, he looked noble. Almost unearthly.
He flinched as her gloved hand touched his arm.
"I—I won't hurt you," she whispered, tearing the cloak from her shoulders to press against the wound.
His eyes opened.
They were amber. Deep, storm-lit amber. And for a second—just a second—they widened in something like recognition.
"A shaman…" he rasped.
She froze.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
But he only reached up and—touched her hand.
Skin to skin.
The world spun.
Time shattered like glass.
—
Aira opened her eyes and found herself standing in sunlight. The forest was gone. The blood, the man, the injury—gone.
She stood in the middle of a courtyard. Stone walls climbed high around her, banners flapping above. Soldiers moved past in gleaming armor. A boy—the same man, but younger—was sparring with a wooden blade, laughing as a grizzled captain barked at him.
He looked free. Untouched by pain.
I'm inside his past, she realized, her heart thudding. He touched me. I didn't mean to—
She glanced at the sun.
No. There was no clock here. No countdown.
But she felt it. Like a thread pulling tighter with every breath.
Fifteen minutes.
That's all she had.
And in that moment, she understood something terrifying.
This man wasn't just a stranger.
He was the first person she'd ever seen whose past she didn't want to leave.