Chapter 5
Reyla
I loved him before I had a name for what it meant
to tremble in someone’s presence and still feel safe.
Before I knew my heart could carry both joy and terror in the same breath.
Not because he was perfect, but because he was real.
Because he held me when he was breaking,
and never once pretended not to feel.
My love never came with guarantees.
It came with the willingness to bleed, to be wrong, and to stay anyway.
I’ll stand beside him or kneel behind him.
Whatever it takes, so long as he doesn’t walk through life without me.
In every world, in every lifetime, I will find him.
Every part of me belongs to this man alone.
Neither time, silence, nor death have the power to
unwrite what the fates have already etched into my bones.