He thought the betrayal would break me .
He didn't realize
It was the key.
I waited for him in the Mirror Garden.
Where the water lies.
Where the stars dare not look down.
I did not wear armor.
I wore memory.
And that was enough.
I knew he'd come.
Eren Lys Valtair.
The boy who once held my hand under the library table during thunderstorms.
The boy who bled to keep my name out of the headmaster's black book.
The boy who still calls me "El" in his sleep.
And now?
The boy they sent to kill me.
I could smell the sleep-stone before I saw it.
Sharp. Cold. Merciful.
The kind of blade you give to someone you still care about.
He looked like he wanted to scream.
But boys like Eren don't scream.
They shatter quietly.
"So you're the one."
It had always been him.
Not because he was strongest.
But because he was the most human.
The most afraid of what I'd become.
The most desperate to believe the girl he once loved was still somewhere beneath the threads and the eyes and the whispers.
"Will you choose me?" I asked.
He trembled.
He raised the dagger.
And he hesitated.
That was all I needed.
I caught the blade between two fingers.
It bent like it had never wanted to hurt me anyway.
"I still love you," I whispered.
Because I did.
Even now.
But love is not always mercy.
Sometimes, love is the door you slam after inviting someone inside.
He crumbled.
Knees to the mirrorwater.
Mind flooding with fractured light.
He will remember this moment in pieces
as if it happened in another life.
That is how forgetting begins.
And that is where I begin.
I turned away.
The threads inside me stirred.
Not magic. Not fate.
But code.
Written into the bones of this world.
My world.
They think I came back wrong.
But I didn't come back.
I was never gone.
They erased me.
Buried me in a different body.
Burned my name from every archive.
But they forgot
You can't kill a story.
You can only delay its return.
And I have returned.
Thread by thread.
Memory by memory.
And now?
One boy has cracked.
Two remain.
And the Academy is running out of time.