Only she remembered what happened on her wedding.


Not the guests, who toasted with honeyed champagne and danced barefoot on the mossy lawn.

Not the groom, whose smile was as steady and warm as the midsummer sun.


Not even the priest, who had stood beneath the ancient willow tree with hands raised and voice trembling in reverence.


They remembered laughter. The scent of wild jasmine. The way the wind played with her veil like a mischievous child.


But Elira remembered something else.


Something impossible.


It began with the dragonfly.


It hovered just inches from her face, its wings catching the light like shards of stained glass—emerald, sapphire, gold. It didn’t flit or buzz. It hovered, still and deliberate, as if studying her. Its eyes were too knowing. Too human. She felt it—not just on her skin, but in her bones. A pulse. A recognition.


Then, as the priest began the vows, the dragonfly darted forward and vanished into her bouquet of moonlilies and silver thistle.


The world tilted.


The willow tree behind them groaned, its bark splitting open like a wound. Branches twisted skyward, forming spirals etched with glowing runes that pulsed like breath. The air thickened, humming with a sound she couldn’t hear but felt—like a memory trying to claw its way back.


Her groom’s eyes turned silver.


The priest’s voice shifted, speaking in a tongue older than the stars.


The guests froze mid-motion, their laughter suspended like dust motes in amber light.


From the shadowed roots of the willow, a figure emerged.


She wore a cloak of raven feathers, each one glistening with dew and shadow. Her face was half-hidden behind a mask carved from bone—delicate, ancient, and cracked down the center. Her presence was quiet, but it pressed against Elira like gravity.

“You are the last,” the woman whispered, her voice like wind through hollow reeds. “The last to remember the pact.”


Elira’s name rang through her like a bell. Not just her name now—but the one she had carried before. Before this life.


Before the veil. She had made a promise beneath this very tree, in a time when dragons still whispered to the wind and stars bent low to listen.

Her wedding was not just a union.


It was a coronation.

A succession.

The dragonfly was the herald.


The masked woman, the witness.

And the willow—the gate.

Then, like a breath held too long, the moment collapsed.


The tree shrank. The runes faded. The groom blinked, his eyes warm and brown again. The priest resumed the vows. The guests clapped and cheered. No one spoke of the dragonfly. No one saw the woman.


But Elira remembered.


And every night since, she returned to the willow tree, barefoot and silent, her veil tucked into her coat pocket like a relic. She waited for the shimmer. For the hum. For the pact to call her back.


Because only she remembered.

And the veil was thinning.