The candle burned lower than it should have.
Time was bending again.
In the temple beyond the forest, the scroll was gone — taken by hands unseen.
The monk who had guarded it for decades had vanished with it.
Only a whisper remained in the stone:
Third life. Final chance. Choose or be chosen.
Eira could feel it in her bones now — something was coming undone.
For the past two nights, she and Kai met in secret. Never in the palace. Always in the places time had cracked: the forgotten bell tower, the sunken path by the ruined observatory, the garden where no one remembered planting the silver orchids.
Each time, the watch ticked louder.
Each time, she remembered more.
Not just from her time in the modern world — but from something older.
Something deeper.
A first life she had forgotten.
It came to her in flashes:
A battlefield soaked in crimson.
A young woman in armor, standing before a burning pagoda.
And a man — not Kai Ren, not the Emperor — but someone else entirely, calling her by a name she did not recognize.
"You were meant to break the cycle," the voice echoed.
"But you loved him."
"So you stayed."
In the third life, everything was converging.
Kai — now whole, remembering both timelines — was no longer safe in the court.
The council had begun to whisper about anomalies, about the Emperor's odd behavior, about "foreign influence."
And they were watching Eira.
The silk note had been discovered in her room. She lied and said it was a poem.
They didn't believe her.
That evening, she returned to the ancient watchtower.
Kai was already there, pacing.
"They'll act soon," he said without greeting. "They think you're a threat."
"Because I remember."
"No. Because they're afraid you'll choose wrong."
She stared at him. "And what is the right choice?"
His expression didn't change. But she saw the fear in his eyes now.
"There is no right choice. There's just the one that leaves one of us behind."
In the silence, she felt the weight of the scroll she never touched — the prophecy she never asked for.
The First Life: sorrow.
The Second Life: blood.
The Third Life…
"Choice", she whispered.
Kai stepped closer. His hands found hers.
"I'm not asking you to stay," he said. "Not this time. I know what it cost you before."
"And what if I want to?"
"Then you might lose everything else."
They stood like that, time thick around them. The watch between them ticked louder than the rain.
Then he asked:
"If the veil breaks, and you're pulled back to your world… will you come looking for me again?"
Her voice caught. But she nodded.
"Always."
Outside, the wind shifted.
The candle in the temple blew out.
And the monk's voice — wherever he had gone — whispered one final line into the night:
The third life ends in choice.
One stays. One fades.
But love, real love, leaves a mark even time cannot erase.