Before We Were

Prologue

PROLOGUE

There are moments that atomize a person—scattering them so wide that gathering the pieces seems like capturing starlight with bare hands.

Seconds. That’s all it takes.

One choice. One cosmic blink, and certainty dissolves into smoke.

Time doesn't just break—it fractures completely.

Before stands forever separated from after, the boundary marked not by a gentle line but by a jagged barrier of broken glass and scattered memories.

When death arrives, it brings no patience for bargaining. It watches the raw, animal desperation of someone seeing their future burn. Death only laughs—cold and ancient—reminding that each heartbeat was merely borrowed, asking with cruel interest: What did you do with my generous loan?

It’s where the realization hits you: life isn't possessed but temporarily held, like a library book with its due date written in vanishing ink. No one belongs to another forever. The universe simply allows brief custody, its permission already fading as it's granted.

These are the moments that transform. That demolish and reconstruct something entirely different—something permanently marked by the knowledge that everything changes between inhale and exhale.

Seconds. That’s all it takes.

Blink.

Gone.

Only darkness remains, with echoes of words forever unspoken.