Chapter 6: She Knew Her Before the End
It rained again.
Not the refreshing kind that makes the world feel clean. This rain was the kind that made the city bleed color, like the world had been left out in the weather too long. The streets melted into smudged charcoal lines. The light smeared across windows like fingerprints on glass. It felt like walking through a memory that was trying to forget itself.
Aria didn't ask where they were going anymore. Selene walked ahead of her, always just out of reach, her silhouette slicing through the gloom like she belonged to a different reality. Her boots didn't splash, didn't echo — didn't sound at all. If it weren't for the fading crimson on her jacket and the way the rain refused to touch her, Aria might've thought she wasn't really there.
They passed an old bus stop plastered with ads for films that never came out. The glass behind the posters was shattered. Someone had tried to tape it back together — poorly. The tape fluttered in the wind like a forgotten flag.
Aria wrapped her coat tighter.
Behind them, a siren rose.
Then another.
Somewhere nearby, something caught fire. Smoke curled upward like a question no one would answer.
No one on the street looked up.
No one ever looked up anymore.
"Where are we going?" Aria asked. Her voice didn't echo. It didn't go anywhere. Just dissolved in the wet air.
Selene didn't stop. "Somewhere quiet."
"You keep saying that. 'Quiet.' 'Safe.' But from what?"
Selene turned then — abruptly, like the word had tripped her.
Her eyes were the same forest - green Aria remembered from the alley. Cold, unreadable. But under the streetlight's flicker, they looked tired.
"From what hunts things like you," she said. "From what follows noise."
A silence opened between them, thick and watchful.
"They aren't people," Selene added, softer now. "They used to be. Some of them. But the moment they look too long into the mirrors, they forget how to come back."
A chill wormed down Aria's spine.
"But I've looked," she said. "I've seen — things. That smile."
Selene nodded.
"And it's seen you."
They didn't talk after that.
They walked.
Past a broken taxi half - submerged in a flooded intersection. Past a bar with its neon sign buzzing like a trapped wasp. Past a child's shoe on the sidewalk, soaking in a puddle that shimmered slightly too much, like oil or something else entirely.
Eventually, they reached the edge of the Old Quarter.
Here, the buildings slouched into themselves. Vines climbed the walls like veins. Windows blinked shut behind layers of grime. A mural of a girl reading a book had peeled away to reveal brick beneath — her face now half - erased, half - smiling.
The studio was hidden behind a metal door disguised as part of a storage unit. Aria never would've seen it if Selene hadn't walked straight through the ivy and knocked three times.
Not a password.
A memory.
Inside, the air was strange — warm, despite the storm. It smelled like chalk dust and turpentine, like the ghosts of a dozen unfinished paintings. The walls were hung with torn canvases and newspaper clippings warped with age. A cracked skylight let in enough light to show where the floor had buckled in places, warping the old wood like waves frozen mid - motion.
Selene lit a single candle on the window ledge. It didn't flicker, even when the wind sighed through the broken panes.
Aria dropped her bag. It hit the floor with a soft, tired thud.
She didn't speak.
Didn't ask questions.
She just sat down on the edge of what might've once been a bench, now covered in a patchwork of discarded linen and forgotten sketches.
"I thought I was losing my mind," she said after a while.
Selene leaned against the far wall. "You're not. You're remembering it."
Aria blinked. "What?"
"That place you slipped into," Selene said. "The field. The light. That wasn't new. It wasn't the first time you'd been there."
Aria turned her head. "How do you know that?"
Selene didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she crossed the room and crouched in front of her. The candlelight caught her face fully now. Aria noticed the scar just beneath her jaw. It looked old, pale like worn ivory. Like a line left by lightning.
"Because I've been there too," Selene said. "And the first time I saw you, you were already waiting for me."
Aria's stomach twisted.
"That doesn't make sense," she whispered.
"It's not supposed to," Selene said. "Not here. Here, things move in loops. In dreams. In echoes. But in the field — everything remembers. Especially us."
Aria stared into her eyes, searching for the lie. The joke. The flaw.
But there wasn't one.
Only truth, steady and soft and painful in how easily it sat between them.
"I don't remember you," Aria said. It sounded like an apology.
"I didn't expect you to," Selene said.
Her gaze flicked toward the window.
Rain had stopped.
Ash had begun to fall.
It floated gently, coating the windowsill in a fine layer of gray dust.
Selene didn't seem surprised.
"I remembered you," she said. "The second I opened my eyes again. I remembered everything — your voice, your laugh, the way you looked at the mirror before you understood what it was."
Aria's breath caught.
Selene didn't move.
"You weren't just someone I met. You were the reason I survived."
The silence that followed was almost holy.
"I don't…" Aria's voice faltered. "I don't feel like someone important."
Selene gave a quiet smile — small, private.
"You never did," she said. "Not even when you tore the world apart to put it back the way it should've been."
A breeze shifted through the broken skylight, carrying the faint sound of bells. Not wind chimes. Not church bells. Something else.
Something deeper.
Aria rose to her feet slowly.
Walked to the window.
Watched the ash fall.
Then, in the glass, she saw the reflection again — her own face.
But this time, the smile was hers.
She blinked.
The smile stayed.
And she realized: it wasn't mocking.
It wasn't other.
It was a memory. One that had found its way home.
Selene stepped beside her.
"You're not the beginning of the end," she said quietly. "You're what comes after."
Outside, across the city, every flower that had bloomed in secret began to turn toward the same place.
The same door.
The one only Aria could open.
And behind that door, something waited.
Not to harm her.
But to come back through her.
Because Aria Solenne had never been running from the end.
She had been walking toward the next story.
And in it — she already knew who she would become.