The campus breathes again.
The air feels different — like a door once locked has been flung open, and the dust of centuries finally allowed to scatter.
---
But Haera doesn't feel lighter.
Not yet.
---
"I thought we'd feel… free," she says as they sit beneath the iron arches behind the old greenhouse, their legs tangled in the thick grass.
Cairos nods, plucking a petal from a violet bloom. "We will. But freedom isn't silence. Sometimes it's noise you've never heard before."
---
For the first time, the sky above Asterley shows stars not aligned in their usual constellations. A new shape burns in the dark — a spiral, with two flickering centers.
A sign of rebirth.
---
They hold the blank ledger in their hands.
Only now it isn't blank.
Not fully.
Page One has changed.
Where it once spoke of endings, it now reads:
> "The first life, once broken, now begins again."
---
And a strange thing happens as they turn the page.
The ink rearranges.
---
Suddenly, they're no longer at Asterley.
They're standing in a field. Wild. Golden.
The sky is lavender.
There are no buildings. No names. No pain.
Only the feeling of before.
---
Haera looks down.
Her hands are not her own.
Too small.
Too smooth.
---
She looks at Cairos — and he is a boy.
Not a student.
Not a warrior.
Just a boy with curiosity in his eyes and a flower behind his ear.
---
"What… is this?" she asks.
"I think we're inside the first life," he whispers. "The one before the cycles."
---
And in the distance, two figures walk hand in hand.
A girl with her hair braided with moonstone.
And a boy wearing the same spiral around his neck that now glows in the sky above them.
---
They're them.
But not them.
Before pain.
Before death.
Before memory.
---
The two past-selves kneel by a tree and carve something into its bark:
> "If we are ever lost, find us here."
---
And just like that — they wake up.
---
Back in the greenhouse.
Back in their bodies.
The spiral still burns overhead.
---
Haera wipes her face.
She didn't realize she'd been crying.
"That was… our very first life," she says.
Cairos wraps his arms around her.
> "And it means we were always real."
"Not just made. Not just trapped."
"We were born. Together."
---
The final sentence in the ledger's new page flickers in:
> "Love remembered is love survived."
---
Outside, Asterley starts its day.
But inside them — an entire world has changed.