The morning sky reflected a soft blue that seemed to have been painted yesterday.
Mist hung between the ruins, covering the wounds of the world that had burned yesterday.
Harith sat by the side of a small river, washing the wounds on his hands as he stared at his own reflection on the surface of the water.
The water was calm, but his face was not.
A face that he barely recognized, like a copy of a human who shouldn't be here.
"If I am a character in this story," he whispered softly,
"why do I feel this pain?"
Leaves trembled. Light footsteps approached from behind.
Lyria, with blond hair illuminated by the morning light, appeared carrying a piece of torn cloth and a strange little smile that was somewhere between relief and doubt.
"I found this... near the old temple."
"What is it?"
"A scarf. It's the same color as the stars in the sky last night."
He spread the cloth out. Its pattern glowed faintly not from sunlight, but from within.
A double-star symbol was engraved on the end.
Harith fell silent.
It was the same symbol he had designed for his old novel "The Song of Two Stars."
"Do you know this symbol?"
Lyria looked at him with hopeful eyes.
"They call me 'star child', Harith. But… I don't know why.
When I look at this symbol, I feel at peace. As if I had seen it before all this was destroyed."
Harith swallowed. Every time Lyria spoke, fragments of vague memories would appear in his mind…chapters he might have written before.
But why had he forgotten everything?
"Lyria," he said softly, "if I said I wasn't from here… would you believe me?"
Lyria stared at him for a long time.
A long silence filled the space between them. The wind stopped for a moment.
Finally, she smiled faintly.
"I believe you."
"Why?"
"Because when I look into your eyes, this world stops breathing for a moment."
"…"
"No human can make the world quiet except someone who comes from up there."
Harith fell silent.
Those words were not just a belief, but a prayer...the prayer of someone who had lived too long in a fractured world.
He turned to the river.
The water that had been clear now began to swirl in small circles, as if the eyes of the world were watching.
"If I really came from up there," he said, slowly but firmly,
"I promise to protect you from whatever will happen."
Lyria stared at him for a long time.
"Why are you willing to make such a promise, Harith?"
"Because... if this world is rewritten, I don't want to lose the only part that is still real."
Silence.
Only the sound of the water continuing to flow as if nature also heard the promise that shouldn't exist.
But from afar, behind the shadow of the hill, something was watching them, letters floating in the air, black as wet ink, composing a new sentence
"The Author has made a promise."
The sky trembled for a moment, almost invisible.
But Harith felt that the world was recording the promise.
That night, as Lyria fell asleep under the campfire light, Harith wrote something on the ground with a twig
"If I am gone, let this world still remember the stars in its eyes."
The wind erased the writing, but the world had already read it.
And far in the sky, two stars twinkled slowly, as if whispering to each other.
---
"In a world created by forgetful hands, a small promise from two hearts can rewrite destiny."