The world did not welcome her gently.
It greeted her with blinding fluorescents and the scent of coffee burnt down to bitterness. People brushed past her without pause, absorbed in their devices and destinations, their lives whirring forward while hers—just restarted—sat still.
Something crushed into her lungs like a foreign force, violent and unfamiliar, tearing through the hollowness that had once filled her chest. Eris sat alone on a metal bench near Gate 17 of a nameless airport terminal. Her fingers curled loosely around the handle of a small suitcase. Her skin was warm. Her pulse, steady. Her body… alive.
Alive.
---
The first thing Eris felt was shame.
It did not creep in gently. It did not unfold like a slow realization. It crashed down on her—merciless, unrelenting, suffocating.
And then came the memories.
Not of love. Not of forgiveness. But of sin.
It came in pieces, jagged and burning. The echo of her own voice—vicious, callous, unrepentant.
"I hate you."
"You were never the man I wanted."
"Every day with you feels like a prison."
"Please, let me go, let me be happier."
She had said those things. Screamed them. Let them tear through the fragile bones of a man who had done nothing but love her. And worse—she had meant them.
Eris's throat tightened, her breath faltering as the weight of her betrayal settled in. Lucian. His name had once curled in her mouth like poison.
Her fingernails dug into the fabric of her coat, trembling as the next memory struck—the night she was supposed to leave. The suitcase packed. The stolen glances with her lover. The quiet arrangement to disappear into another life—one where Lucian no longer existed.
And yet, he had waited for her.
That night, standing beneath the flickering streetlight outside their home, he had waited.
Not with anger. Not with fury. But with prayer.
And she had repaid him with spite.
"You disgust me."
"I never wanted you."
"I wish I had never married you."
The agony came swiftly. It struck her chest like cold steel, tearing through every fiber of her being, and suddenly—she cried.
Not the restrained sobbing of someone merely grief-stricken. Not the quiet weeping of a soul aching. It was raw, unhinged, ripped from the core of something ancient inside her—the wail of a soul returning to its mortal cage.
Her cries shattered the stillness of the airport terminal, drawing cautious glances, murmured confusion. But no one knew. No one could possibly know.
That here, in seat B16, sat a woman reborn not into freedom—but into suffering.
Lucian watched from the crowd, unseen but present. His gaze did not hold anger, nor did it carry judgment. Only sorrow—the kind that had lingered through lifetimes. Lucian ached to go to her.
He wanted to go to her—desperately, foolishly. To be the first face she saw when she raised her head, however he was scared. The Eris he knew, will run nor slap him, rather than comforted.
Thus, he didn't move.
Because the laws of a fearful heart, the brittle script of divine bargains, held him in place like iron chains forged from memory. So he stood there, stone-bound, watching the woman he will die for cry like a child lost in a crowd.
---
By evening, the sobbing had faded to trembling silence. Her body felt hollow, as if something within her had torn free, leaving nothing but the remnants of regret.
Home. 'She wanted to go home.'
But where was home?
It's the house she once fled. It's the arms she had abandoned. It's the love she had condemned.
Her fingers curled around the handle of her suitcase. She pulled, dragging the weight behind her, stepping into the neon-lit corridors of the terminal.
Lucian followed, always in the distance, never near enough to touch.
The cold glass doors parted, revealing a city washed in rain—skyscrapers lined with golden lights, taxi cabs drifting through the slick streets, the scent of damp earth and gasoline curling into the midnight air.
Eris hesitated at the threshold.
Something inside her ached.
Guilt.
She stared at the city, at the reflections rippling across the wet pavement, at the sheer enormity of what stood before her.
What will she do now?
Where should she begin—atonement or love? Redemption or ruin?
Her hands clenched at the straps of her suitcase. Her breath hitched.
And then, without knowing where she was going—while understanding what lay ahead—she rode.