Excerpt from Midnight Encounter by Lily Storm:
The night was cold when Leon found her.
Aurora lay curled beneath a wagon, her dress torn and her hands wrapped around her middle, as if she could will herself invisible. She was feverish, trembling, her breaths shallow and quick. The townsfolk had all turned her away, fearful of the illness that stalked her body like a shadow with claws.
But Leon didn't flinch.
He crouched beside her, his coat heavy around his shoulders, and offered a hand without a word.
She blinked up at him, eyes glassy and wide. "You shouldn't—"
"I should," he said simply.
She was light in his arms, lighter than she should've been. He carried her through the alleys and into the quiet warmth of his apothecary. Laid her gently on the cot in the back. Lit a fire. Boiled water. He ground herbs with the practiced rhythm of someone who'd done it a thousand times before.
For two nights he stayed by her side, pressing cool cloths to her brow, whispering lullabies in a language no longer spoken. When she stirred, when the fever finally broke, her first words were:
"You stayed."
Leon smiled softly. "Of course I did."
Her fingers brushed his. "You saved me."
He shook his head. "No. You saved yourself. I just held the light while you did it."
The silence between them wasn't empty—it was full. Of gratitude. Of something blooming. Something that had no name but made the world feel less cold.
"Can I stay? I want tohelp repay this life you gave back to me, I unfortunately have been left behind by my group, they did not want to chance catching this 'plague'," Aurora asked.
When Aurora smiled at him with sunlight tangled in her curls, Leon knew.
He would never let her leave.
Lance closed Midnight Encounter slowly, his thumb lingering on the last page as if afraid that lifting it would make the illusion disappear. His heart ached—not just with the beauty of the story, but with the haunting sense that it wasn't fiction. It was familiar.
But not exactly right.
Not how it really happened.
He stared at the wall of his office, the silence suddenly loud. The flickering shadows from his desk lamp danced like ghosts across the ceiling. And one of them opened a door in his mind.
The truth came without warning.
* * *
It had been a life of shadows and flickering candlelight. A time when plague whispered through the streets like a curse, and every knock on the door could bring death.
He remembered her name: Lily.
He remembered the way she sang to herself when she thought no one could hear. He remembered the way she'd braided lavender into her hair. And he remembered the day he found her—burning with fever, abandoned behind the cobbler's shop, a threadbare shawl clutched in her fingers like it could keep her alive.
He had taken her in.
He had nursed her back from the brink with every herb, every tincture, every spell he could recall from the pages of old books. And for a brief, shining moment, they were happy.
But the world was cruel.
The townsfolk had grown suspicious. Whispers of witchcraft spread through the village like wildfire. "How is she alive?" they asked. "Why does he never get sick?"
And then came the fire.
They dragged him from his home in the middle of the night, tore Lily screaming from his arms, and declared her healing unnatural. He was forced to watch as they bound her to the post. Her fever had returned days before. She was weak. She couldn't fight them off.
He remembered how she looked through the smoke.
Her eyes—glassy and full of tears—had searched for him as the flames climbed higher. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't angry. She only looked sad.
"I'm sorry," she had whispered.
And he—powerless, bleeding from a broken rib, throat hoarse from screaming—had begged the gods to take him too.
They did.
* * *
Lance blinked, breath catching hard in his chest.
The pages of Midnight Encounter trembled slightly in his hands. In Lily's version, Aurora lived. Leon saved her. They built a life. Loved without fear.
But in reality—in that forgotten thread of a world long dead—he had failed again.
He dropped the book onto his desk and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to shove the memory away. But it stayed. Thick as smoke. Heavy as guilt.
"Why?" he muttered aloud. "Why write it differently?"
Then the answer came, soft and clear, in Lily's voice, imagined but certain:
Because we deserved one life where we made it.
And maybe—just maybe—this life was still unwritten.
Lance didn't sleep much since he started reading Lily's novels, for a week he used every spare time he had to read, chasing all the mystery that was unravelling Infront of him.
After Midnight Encounter, he stayed in his office, surrounded by Lily's books—Saltwater Roses, The Sound of Falling Stars, Moon Shining at Us, The Girl Who Waited by the Sea. Each one felt like a key, a soft whisper from lives lost to time. In one, the heroine died from a rare blood disorder—saved only by a mysterious healer who appeared days before her final breath. In another, a seaside town doctor performed a surgery that, even by today's standards, would've been nearly impossible. And yet, it worked. The girl survived. They got their happy ending.
In Moon shining at Us, the male lead bore a striking resemblance to Lance—not physically, but in the choices he made. Every page hummed with urgency, the way he fought fate, the impossible odds he bent to his will. There was even a line about hands trembling over an incision, and how "he stitched her back to life with a thread spun from hope and stubbornness."
Each book ended the same way: with love. With life. With survival.
But Lance remembered the real endings—the ones lost to fire, to war, to malice, to plagues and poison. None of them were happy.
So why did she write them this way?
He closed the last novel just as dawn broke over the city a few days later, his fingers curling slowly around the edge of his desk.
She remembered, too.
Not clearly. Not consciously. But somewhere in the architecture of her mind, the echoes had found her. In her dreams. In her pages.
He exhaled and leaned back in his chair.
And then—he waited.
* * *
It was a week before he saw her again.
Lily had been recovering well post-surgery; in fact, she was due to leave because she was on the mend. His team had done a clean job. She'd needed to stay for observation and her color had returned. She moved more, spoke more, even smiled more.
She was sitting upright in her hospital bed, sunlight streaming through the window, a notebook resting against her knees as she scribbled furiously. Her IV pole stood like a quiet sentinel beside her. Her aunt Claire sat reading near the window.
Lance knocked gently on the doorframe.
Lily looked up, startled, then grinned. "Dr. Lance. You're not here with a giant needle, are you?"
He laughed softly and stepped inside. "Not today. I come in peace."
Claire stood, giving them both a little wave. "I'll grab some coffee. Holler if you need me, bug."
When the door shut behind her, Lance pulled the visitor's chair beside the bed and lowered himself into it. He gestured toward the notebook. "New chapter?"
Lily tilted her head. "Sort of. I haven't decided if it's going to be a novel or just…a dream."
He nodded slowly. "You write your dreams a lot?"
"Too much, probably," she said, brushing a stray curl behind her ear. "Sometimes they're just images. A scent, a voice. Other times it's a whole story—faces, places, feelings so vivid I wake up crying or smiling like an idiot."
He watched her closely. "And the man in them? The one who always saves her...is he someone you know?"
She hesitated, chewing the end of her pen. "No. I never see his face clearly. It's like he's made of smoke. But I always feel like I know him. Isn't that strange?"
"Not really," Lance said, heart thudding quietly. "Sometimes memory works in layers. Dreams, too."
She gave a soft chuckle. "I call him a chameleon. He's different in every dream, but his soul—it feels the same. Like I've met him before. Like he's been chasing time to find me again." Her eyes flicked back to her notebook. "And sometimes, he loses me."
A silence bloomed between them—quiet, delicate.
"I finished reading your books," Lance said gently, pulling one from his coat pocket. Saltwater Roses. "All of them."
Lily's eyes widened. "All of them?"
"They're beautiful," he said. "But they're also...similar. Different places, different eras, but always the same kind of girl. Always sick. Always saved. Always by him."
She nodded slowly. "I guess I have a pattern. Guilty as charged."
Lance leaned forward. "You said your dreams can end horribly. But your stories—they don't. Not once. Why?"
Lily looked at him then, something fierce and fragile in her eyes. "I made a decision. If I was going to keep having those dreams, I was going to give them new endings. Happy ones. Because in my books, I'm the creator. And I'll be damned if those characters suffer on my watch."
Lance's voice was low. "Even if they did suffer before?"
"Especially then."
Lance didn't respond. He let the silence do the heavy lifting.
"I don't know why I dream the way I do," Lily continued. "But they're awful sometimes. Tragedy after tragedy. Like I've lived through lifetimes of loss that don't belong to me. It's exhausting."
She glanced at him, eyes wide and honest. "But when I write them, I get to fix it. I get to make it right. I get to let her live, I also get to give him a chance to save and protect what he tried so hard to keep."
Lance swallowed around the tightness in his throat. "You ever wonder why they all feel so real?"
"Every day," she whispered.
He leaned back slowly. "You know...some would say dreams are just memory without context. Maybe you're remembering lives you've forgotten."
"Do you believe that?" she asked, tone curious rather than skeptical.
He hesitated, then gave her a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I believe in second chances."
A nurse entered, checking Lily's vitals and her IV. Lance rose, stepping aside to give space. He glanced at Lily one last time before he left.
"Thanks for the stories," he said quietly. "They remind me of something important."
She tilted her head. "What's that?"
"That maybe...just maybe...happy endings are possible."
That night, Lance returned to his apartment. He stood at the window overlooking the city, watching as streetlights flickered on like stars.
If this life was unwritten, as Lily had said—then he would write it with precision.
She would live; he would make sure nothing got a chance to take her away from him.
That--- he swore on his life.