The cherry blossoms swirled around them like drifting snow, though the world beneath the trees was perfectly still.
The young man — unaware of his true past, yet carrying its weight in his pulse — held the girl's hand. Her warmth was real, human, yet there was something beneath it: a faint hum of magic, a whisper of a life that had endured centuries.
> "Do you ever feel… that something is calling you?" he asked, tracing the faint sigil on his palm.
She looked at him, her violet eyes flickering for just a moment with the light of memory. "Sometimes," she admitted softly. "Like echoes in a wind I cannot follow… but I can sense them."
He tilted his head. "Echoes?"
> "Memories," she whispered, brushing a blossom from his shoulder. "Not ours… not yet. But fragments of what we've lived before — the things we've loved, and the things we've lost. They linger, waiting for us to remember."
The wind stirred, carrying petals that glowed faintly, each one a pulse of memory. One drifted to the ground and lingered at his feet. When he touched it, a vision flared before his eyes: the ancient temple, the mirror of obsidian, and the goddess he had loved, reaching for him as the world burned around them.
He stumbled back, breathless. "I… I saw her. You."
Sakura's hand squeezed his. "I saw it too. It's not the first time these fragments have called to us. That's why the cycle endures — because love, even fractured, remembers itself."
He swallowed, feeling a warmth in his chest that was both painful and exhilarating. "Then… we've done this before?"
She nodded. "Many times. And yet, each time feels new. Each time… we are given the choice to endure it differently."
A rustle from the forest made them both pause. Shadows shifted along the path — not hostile, but aware. Remnants of old magic. Echoes of gods who had once tried to erase her, sensing her presence again.
> "They're still here," she murmured. "And they always will be, until the last petal falls."
He lifted his chin, determination in his eyes. "Then we face them together."
She smiled, a soft, aching smile that carried the weight of centuries. "Yes. Together."
As they walked beneath the blossoms, petals drifted in their wake, carrying whispers of memory: joy, sorrow, battles, laughter, and tears from countless lives. Each one a reminder that their bond was older than time, yet fragile as a spring bloom.
> "No matter what comes," he said, "I will remember this life — and every life before it."
> "And I," she replied, pressing her forehead to his, "will remember you."
The wind swirled around them, carrying a voice older than the forest itself:
> "Every spring… every dawn… until the last blossom falls." 🌸
The petals fell faster now, as if urging them forward — toward a future written in both memory and love, and toward challenges they had yet to face.