The rain was still falling.
But it was different now—soft, ordinary, almost gentle. The kind of rain that cleaned streets instead of breaking them.
Elara walked through it, coat pulled tight, shoes soaking in shallow puddles. She didn't know where she was going. Only that she should be somewhere else.
The city was whole again.The glass towers stood unbroken, the trams hummed along their rails, and people moved like they'd never been gone. But there was something missing—something the air couldn't name.
Sometimes, when she passed a window, she caught her reflection pausing just a heartbeat too long.Like it was remembering someone she'd forgotten.
She lived alone now, in an apartment she didn't remember renting. The key fit, though. The walls were bare except for one painting—hung above the bed, half-finished, its colors soft and uncertain.
A man's silhouette standing in the rain.The face unfinished. The brush frozen mid-stroke years ago, maybe days.
She had no idea why she'd painted it.
Some nights, she stood in front of it, brush in hand, trying to fill in the lines—but her hand would shake, and she'd stop. It felt wrong to finish it, like erasing something sacred.
The rain outside always grew heavier when she tried.
In another version of nowhere, Aiden watched her.
Or what was left of him did.
He stood in the echo field—an endless stretch of rain and light, reflections folding in on each other like mirrors without end. He could see Elara through the distortion, living in a world that no longer contained him.
She'd survived. That was what he wanted.
But the ache didn't fade.
Sometimes she'd look out the window, tilting her head just slightly, and he'd almost believe she could see him. Almost.
He tried to speak once. The sound dissolved into static before it reached her.
"Don't," came a voice behind him.
He turned. Kellen's outline flickered in the distance, fractured by the rain. Not truly Kellen—just a residual echo, maybe a memory that had refused to dissolve.
"You're not supposed to be here," the ghost said. "You traded your place for hers."
Aiden looked back at Elara, her smile faint as she opened her window to the rain."I know," he said quietly.
"Then why stay?"
Aiden closed his eyes. "Because sometimes love isn't leaving. It's… remembering."
The echo of Kellen nodded, then faded into the storm.
That night, Elara dreamed again.
She was standing in a field of rain that never ended. A man waited a few steps away, watching her with the softest smile.
His face was blurred by the light, but she didn't need to see it. She knew him. She always had.
He reached out, as if to brush her hand. She reached back.
Their fingers met for a fraction of a second—warm, real.
When she woke, her pillow was damp with rainwater.
And the painting above her bed was finished.
The man now had a face.
She stared at it for a long time, her heart aching for reasons she couldn't explain. Then she smiled, a small, quiet thing.
"Goodbye," she whispered.
Outside, the rain fell softer—like the world was finally at peace.
And in the echo field, where time no longer mattered, Aiden turned his head toward the sound, and smiled back.