The book felt heavier than it should.
Oryn stood there, staring at the ink that marked the end of something that had never fully begun. The words she had left behind—Some stories aren't meant to be finished. Some endings don't echo.—sat like a whisper in his mind, lingering in the spaces between his thoughts.
He flipped through the pages, searching for something more, some hidden message tucked away in the margins. But there was nothing. No more letters. No more traces of her.
She had made her choice.
Lana was gone.
The realization settled deep, carving out an ache he hadn't been prepared for. He had known—had felt it the moment he saw the book back in its place—that she had left this city behind. And yet, standing here, he found himself reaching for her ghost, for the version of her that had once existed in these pages.
The café around him blurred, the sounds dimming as he closed the book and held it against his chest. He should leave. Let this be the end.
But still, he lingered.
As if staying here just a little longer might bring her back.
Lana had always thought goodbyes would feel final. That there would be a moment—a sharp, defining instant—where she would know it was over.
But standing on the platform as the train hummed beneath her feet, she realized goodbyes weren't always loud. Some were quiet. Some slipped through fingers like sand, dissolving before one could grasp what they truly meant.
She exhaled, watching the city blur through the glass.
Aurivelle had been a dream, a fleeting season of letters and unanswered questions. A place that had given her something she hadn't even known she was looking for. And yet, as the train pulled forward, she wondered if she had truly left it behind or if some part of her had been stitched into its streets, its corners, its quiet little cafés.
And him.
She closed her eyes.
Oryn had been a stranger in every way that mattered, and yet, she had known him more intimately than people she had spoken to for years. But maybe that was the way of things—some connections were meant to exist in fragments, in unfinished stories, in echoes that never quite reached their end.
Her fingers brushed against the edge of a ticket folded neatly in her palm.
Maybe this was how their story was meant to be written. In the spaces they left behind.
Her fingers brushed against the edge of a ticket folded neatly in her palm.
Maybe this was how it was always supposed to end.
The platform was quieter than she expected. The kind of stillness that came just before departure, when goodbyes had already been whispered and all that remained was the waiting.
Lana exhaled slowly, her grip tightening around the handle of her bag. The weight of it felt like the past she was finally leaving behind—light enough to carry, heavy enough to remember.
Aurivelle had been home once. And maybe, in some ways, it always would be. The city still carried echoes of late-night walks, of rain-soaked streets, of conversations written into the margins of borrowed pages.
Of him.
She closed her eyes for a moment. Let herself feel it. The ache that wasn't sharp but deep, woven into her like a thread too fine to unravel.
When she opened them, the train was pulling in.
A final inhale. A step forward.
Somewhere in the city, Café Amour would be opening its doors. The scent of espresso and vanilla would drift through the air. Someone else would find a book waiting on the shelf.
But not her. Not anymore.
She boarded the train without looking back.
Aurivelle moved on, as cities always did.
The rain still fell in quiet drizzles against the cobblestone streets. The café still filled with the scent of freshly ground espresso, its tables occupied by people lost in stories that weren't theirs. The book-lined shelves still stood against the walls, offering their quiet invitations to those who needed them.
Oryn walked past Café Amour but didn't step inside.
Not today.
Not with the book tucked under his arm, its pages heavier than they should be.
It had been days. Maybe weeks. Time felt fluid, slipping past without urgency, without meaning. He had gone back once, just once, after she left that final letter. Not to look for another reply—he knew there wouldn't be one. But to stand in the space where she had been, where she had written her last words, where something had existed for a moment before it disappeared.
And yet, he had taken the book with him.
It sat on his desk now, unopened. A piece of something unfinished. A reminder of what had almost been.
Maybe one day he would read it again.
But not today.
The city moved on. The world kept turning.
And so did he.