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Raine wasn’t sure when the floor had turned to stars.
One moment, she had been walking– down a hallway? across a bridge? through the sky?– and the next, her feet touched light instead of stone, each step rippling across a nightscape scattered with pinpricks of silver. The shelves rose around her like trees, impossibly tall, their books shifting and muttering among themselves in languages she didn’t recognize but somehow completely understood.
There was no ceiling and there were no walls. Only arches that led to more arches, and doorways that opened into oceans, or forests, or nothing at all.
She turned a corner and found herself exactly where she hadn’t been a moment before: a library. A dream of one. Silent, ancient, and undeniably alive. Her hands itched to reach for the volumes that drifted just out of reach, pages fluttering like wings.
Somewhere far above, a bell chimed– not with sound, but with feeling. A pull, soft and undeniable, somewhere behind the shelves.
Instantly, she knew: she wasn’t alone.
As if drawn forward by memory or instinct, she stepped forward. The shelves shifted around her with the grace of curtains in windless air, rearranging themselves in slow, deliberate patterns. She didn’t question it. In this place, it felt safer not to ask.
She rounded another corner and stopped in her tracks.
He was there.
Standing at the end of the aisle with one hand resting on the spine of a floating book, Zelos looked like something painted into the dream rather than born of it. His usual charisma was softened here, blurred at the edges like ink in water. Hair catching the glow of the star-lit floor, eyes brighter than they had any right to be, his simple presence was enough to draw her in closer, whether she wanted to approach or not.
“Raine,” he greeted her, before she’d even spoken.
Her name sounded strange here. It echoed and lingered in a way that felt oddly inappropriate, like it should never have been said in the first place.
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she stepped forward slowly, unsure whether her feet would hold or whether the dream might scatter like ash beneath her.
“You’re not real,” she murmured, though it came out softer than she meant. “You can’t be.”
“Maybe not.” He smiled, and even in this fractured place, it was still the one she’d come to know so well, “but you still found me.”
She shook her head slowly, eyes scanning the impossible library, its endless rows of shelves and floating books. “I must be dreaming.”
“Does it feel like a dream?”
“Yes,” she said, though it came out as more of a question. “No. I don’t know.”
Her heart pounded in her chest– not in fear, but in the terrible, aching way it used to when he walked into a room without warning. When she’d spent hours pretending not to watch him. When he’d left.
Her arms wrapped around herself, staving off a chill that had suddenly taken over her, but that she was fairly certain had nothing to do with temperature. “I’ve had this dream before. Sort of. A place with books that whisper and where the floors are made of stars. But you were never in it.”
“And yet, here I am.”
“But you… you died.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “I watched you die. I helped kill you.”
He didn’t argue, and he didn’t flinch. He simply nodded, eyes never leaving hers. “I know.”
A silence passed between them, and somewhere behind the stacks, a book closed itself gently, like a sigh. Raine’s throat tightened.
“Why now?” she choked. “Why this dream, and why are you here?”
Zelos took a step closer, gently caressing a book that floated in his way. “Maybe because you needed it.”
“Needed what, exactly? A hallucination? A ghost?”
“A moment with your thoughts.”
“What for?”
“For closure, maybe?”
“‘Closure’?” she echoed, testing the word on her tongue. As if any such thing could exist between them. The notion felt flimsy, like trying to bandage a wound with smoke. “…This really is a dream.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“So, you really are gone for good. You’re not coming back.”
“That’s right.”
“Oh…”
She felt the warmth of his presence– too real for a dream but too solid for memory– and it shattered something inside her.
Her fingers twitched at her sides, aching to reach for him, and she hated that they did. She clenched them into fists, as if she could squeeze the want right out of her palms.
“I’m afraid,” she confessed.
“Of what?”
“That all of this will end, and that I’ll wake up to nothing meaning anything.”
Zelos’ hand found hers, slow and careful, like he was touching something sacred. “Then don’t think. Just feel.”
And she did.
She let herself lean in, though just barely, and rejoiced silently when the dream didn’t immediately dissolve. The books didn’t scatter. The stars around them held steady.
His hand was warm in hers, thumb tracing slow, calming circles against her skin. It was so terribly familiar it hurt more than it provided any sort of comfort.
“I missed you,” she whispered before she could stop herself.
“I know,” he replied, but there was no pride in it, only sorrow. “I missed you too.”
Raine looked up, and for a moment, he was just Zelos again. Not a dream or a memory. Just… him. The way she remembered him before her world turned upside down.
Her breath caught as sudden dread washed over her, the realization crashing down that this moment wouldn’t last. She would eventually be forced to return to the real world– a world where he no longer existed.
“Will I forget this when I wake up?”
“Maybe. But maybe you’ll remember enough.”
She didn’t know if it was the dream that pulled her closer, or her own traitorous heart– but it didn’t matter. She was already moving, reaching out to take firm hold of the man in front of her.
Their lips met like the first page of a forgotten story– soft at first, almost unsure. But the longer they lingered, the more it bloomed: slow, longing, and incredibly familiar. Her fingers curled in the fabric of his jacket, prohibiting his escape, while his hand slid to her cheek, holding her face in the most gentle embrace she’d ever received. Neither of them trembled or hesitated.
Their lips moved in perfect cadence, tongues occasionally dancing together, like they always should have. The kiss was heated but certain, soaked in all the things they’d never had the time or courage to say. It didn’t ask for forgiveness and it didn’t drum up excuses. It simply existed in its unrushed and unashamed glory, feeling more like remembering than a goodbye.
When they finally pulled apart, Zelos rested his forehead against hers, his breath warm against her skin. Neither of them spoke. The silence between them felt sacred and fragile, like if either of them dared to name the moment, it might vanish entirely.
She wanted to stay. Goddess, she wanted to stay.
But the light was slowly changing, and somewhere high above, a second chime echoed across the stars– not the soft pull from before, but something deeper. Final. The kind of sound that meant the story was closing.
Raine’s eyes stung with sudden tears of panic. She reached for him again, but her fingers slipped through empty air. “No,” she breathed. “Not yet–”
She could still feel his warm hands on her, but they were fading quicker than she could commit them to memory.
“I’m sorry,” Zelos said, his voice thick with anguish. “I wanted more time.”
“Then stay,” she begged. “Please. Just– stay.”
His thumb brushed stray tears from her cheek in a final, lingering touch. “I can’t.”
And the worst part?
She knew that.
A third chime rang out, and suddenly the hush around them vanished. A great rustling rose like the brewing of a terrible storm, and thousands of voices whispered over one another until they became a single, deafening roar. Raine could only gasp in horror as the room began to shift and spin, each beat of her heart feeling like a countdown to impending doom.
The library unraveled around her, pages scattering like birds and arches folding inward until the world became nothing more than light and wind and absence. She blinked, and suddenly Zelos was farther away, vast emptiness filling the space between them. She couldn’t reach him even if she tried. She blinked once more, and he was gone.
Then, after what felt like forever, silence– barren and cruel in its stillness.
She gasped awake.
The air in her room was cold, still, and suddenly far too real. Her blankets tangled around her legs, trapping her in a grasp that was terribly unpleasant. A candle had long since burned out on the desk across the room, leaving her in an eerie darkness that sent chills down her spine.
Her throat was tight. Her hands trembled.
She pressed her hand to her cheek without thinking, half expecting to find his thumb still brushing against it.
There was nothing.
Only the quiet.
Only her.
And the faint echo of a voice that wasn’t there: “Raine…”