Morning felt unreal.
Aarohi stood at the edge of the empty land where House Number 27 had once leaned like a listening animal. Sunlight touched grass, birds moved freely, and the road hummed with ordinary life — yet the air still carried a memory of walls that had learned her breathing.
She tightened her coat and turned away.
Each step felt lighter than the one before, but not free.
Behind her, the wind whispered.
Not words.
Names.
She stopped.
Her heartbeat slowed as she listened carefully. The sound wasn't in the air — it was in the soil, inside the roots beneath the earth, repeating syllables the way oceans repeat shorelines.
She shook it off and kept walking.
Until she heard laughter.
Small.
Soft.
Familiar.
"Aaru…"
Her body froze.
No fear at first.
Only longing.
She turned.
Rohan stood across the road.
Not broken.
Not twisted.
Not wrong.
He looked exactly as he had the last summer before the accident — messy hair, scraped knees, sunlight stuck in his smile.
Tears blurred her eyes.
"Rohan?"
He tilted his head gently.
"You remembered me," he said.
Her chest ached. "Of course I did."
He stepped closer.
But the road between them stretched, growing longer than distance should allow. His feet never touched the ground.
That's when she saw it.
Behind his eyes.
Walls.
Tiny, breathing walls moving slowly, learning her shape again.
Her breath caught.
"You're not him," she whispered.
Rohan's smile didn't fade.
It widened.
"Neither is the house," he replied softly. "We're what stays when places forget."
The land behind him began lifting, folding upward like invisible architecture. Not a building — a suggestion of one. Shadows stacked themselves into corners that didn't yet exist.
Aarohi stepped back.
Her wrist burned.
The words she carried glowed faintly:
REMEMBER WITHOUT RUNNING.
She inhaled.
This time, she didn't flee.
She met his gaze.
"I remember," she said firmly. "But I don't belong."
For the first time, something flickered across his face.
Uncertainty.
The wind screamed once.
The ground settled.
Rohan's shape thinned like fog.
But before vanishing, he leaned close enough for only her to hear.
"We already learned your name once, Aaru."
Her stomach turned cold.
"And houses are patient."
Then he was gone.
Only wind remained.
Aarohi stood alone on the road, shaking — not from fear anymore, but from understanding.
Some horrors are not escaped.
They are outgrown.
But they never stop watching who might grow into them next.
She walked forward into town.
Behind her, deep beneath quiet soil, something invisible began writing again.
Not a wall.
Not a door.
Just the first letter of a name.