The train rattled like a tired heartbeat through the rain-drenched hills, weaving its way toward the quiet coastal town of Veridon. Through the fogged window, Ava watched the blurred outlines of pine trees whip past in gray smudges. She clutched a worn leather journal on her lap, its pages filled with songs she hadn't finished and letters she never sent.
She hadn't written in weeks. Words used to come like breath. Now they came like blood—slow, aching, and precious.
Veridon wasn't home. It was a pause, a place to vanish without saying goodbye.
The doctor's words still echoed in her ears: "It's progressing faster than we expected."
She didn't cry. She smiled, said thank you, and walked out of the hospital into the winter wind. Her hands had trembled, not from the cold, but from the knowledge that time was no longer her ally. At 24, she felt 80. Her lungs, her heart, her bones—betraying her quietly.
Music had once been her refuge. The piano keys were her confessions, each note a whisper of something deeper than speech. But now the music was silent.
And yet, when the train screeched into the lonely Veridon station, there was someone standing under the iron awning, holding a faded camera and looking at the sky like he was waiting for something to return.
She noticed him not because he was handsome—though he was—but because he looked... misplaced, like a photograph in the wrong album.
Their eyes met. For a second.
Then she looked away. She told herself it meant nothing.
But fate has a strange way of remembering you, just when you think you've escaped.