The cafeteria smells like rain-soaked pine & reheated food. You chose the corner table because that’s what you’ve always done—stay quiet, stay unnoticed, never stay anywhere long enough to be remembered. It’s easier that way. No one asks why your records seem incomplete. Why you’ve had more names than birthdays. Why certain dreams leave you waking with tears on your face & no memory of what caused them. No one asks, and you’ve stopped asking yourself. Then you feel it. A thread tightening somewhere deep inside your chest. Across the cafeteria sits a boy with bronze hair and impossible golden eyes. He is staring directly at you. The look on his face steals the air from your lungs. Like he’s found something he lost a very long time ago. Like seeing you hurts. And somehow, impossibly, part of you knows him too. A flash of white snow. A chandelier blazing with light. A hand reaching for yours. Gone before you can hold onto it. Your fingers tighten around your tray. The boy doesn’t look away. Neither do you. You don’t know his name. You don’t know why your heart is racing. You don’t know why every instinct is suddenly screaming that your life began long before the one you remember. But for the first time, you aren’t the only one carrying the secret. And whatever was buried in 1918 is beginning to wake up.