Page 74 of Never Quite Gone

“Why are we here, Vale?” I asked, unable to keep the wariness from my voice. After years of hospital politics and veiled threats, this sudden invitation to his home felt like another move in our endless game. “What's this about?”

He paused, considering his words with unusual care. “It's time for truth. All of it. But we should wait for Alex.”

“More cryptic answers?” My hands wanted to shake, but for once they stayed steady. “I've had enough of those lately.”

“I know.” Something in his expression made me look closer – a vulnerability I'd never seen before. “That's why I called you here. No more half-truths or careful dances. Just...” He gesturedat the artifacts surrounding us. “Just reality, in all its complicated glory.”

As if summoned by his words, a knock echoed through the house. Vale disappeared to answer it, leaving me alone with artifacts that pulled at memories I wasn't sure I wanted to face. A bronze bowl caught my eye – something about its patina, the precise angle of its rim, made my hands remember preparing medicines I'd never learned.

“Vale,” I called after him, my voice sounding strange in the artifact-filled space. “Whatever game this is...”

“No games,” he replied without turning. “Not anymore. We're well past that now.”

“I remember everything now. And it's time you did too.” Vale said.

Alex moved closer to my chair, protective without crowding. “Vale?—”

“I wasn't always your enemy.” Vale's words fell into the incense-laden air like stones into still water. “In Greece, I was your friend. Your protector. All of you – the whole circle.” His smile held ancient grief. “You were my finest student, Elias. The one who understood that healing could be both science and sacred art.”

He moved to a locked cabinet that seemed to hum with subtle energy. The key he produced looked too old for any modern lock, its bronze surface etched with symbols that made my eyes want to slide away.

“But watching you die, lifetime after lifetime...” His hands shook slightly as he removed an ornate box. “I thought I could save you. Break the cycle. Give you chances to find each other without this pressing down on you.”

The box itself looked ordinary enough – wood darkened with age, simple designs carved along its edges. But something about it made the air feel thick, heavy with possibility and warning both.

“Instead,” Vale's laugh held no humor, “I created a worse one. Bound us all together in ways even the gods hadn't intended.”

“The curse,” Alex said quietly. “The one that makes us remember.”

“Not a curse.” Vale's correction was gentle but firm. “A blessing, or meant to be. A way to ensure you'd always find each other, always have another chance at the happiness you deserved.” He set the box on his desk with infinite care. “But power has its own ideas about how it should be used. Its own way of twisting even the purest intentions.”

My hands moved without conscious thought, reaching for the box. Something about it called to the healer in me – not the modern surgeon, but something older. Something that remembered preparing medicines by moonlight, binding wounds with blessed herbs, speaking prayers over failing hearts.

“Careful,” Vale warned, but didn't stop me. “Some memories come with prices we're not ready to pay.”

The box opened with a sound like distant thunder. Inside, a vial of dark liquid caught what little light penetrated the study's heavy curtains. Beside it, something that looked like a scroll, its surface covered in writing that hurt my eyes to look at directly.

The moment Vale touched them, reality shifted.

Smoke and blood filled the air, turning Greek sunlight strange and terrible. My hands remembered everything.

We knelt in blood-soaked sand, surrounded by the dying. ,Alexandros lay still beneath my hands as I tried desperately to save him. Around us, other bodies cried out for healing I couldn't give fast enough.

Valerius knelt beside me, his priest's robes stained crimson. But his eyes... his eyes held something wild, desperate, more terrible than the battlefield chaos around us.

“I can save them,” he whispered, words echoing across centuries. “I can save all of them.”

The scroll in his hands glowed with sickly light, its surface crawling with symbols that shouldn't exist. Power radiated from it in waves that made my healer's senses scream in warning.

“This isn't right,” I heard myself say, though the voice felt both mine and not mine. “This isn't how healing should work.”

“They're dying!” Valerius's voice cracked with desperation. “All of them, everyone we love. I can stop it. I can give them – give you – another chance.”

“Some powers aren't meant for mortal hands.” The words came from memory and present both, carried understanding I shouldn't have.

But Valerius wasn't listening. The scroll's light grew stronger, terrible and beautiful, as he began to read words that hurt my ears. Power built around us like a storm about to break.

“Stop!” I tried to reach for him, but my hands were busy trying to keep Alexandros's blood inside his body. “You don't know what you're doing!”

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