Page 75 of Never Quite Gone

“I know exactly what I'm doing.” Valerius's smile held madness born of too much knowledge. “I'm saving you. All of you. Giving you chances to find each other again and again until you get it right.”

The memory crystallized, more vivid than any before. Through Elias's eyes, I watched Valerius pull a sacred scroll from his robes, its pages stained with blood and time. The text seemed to move on its own, symbols crawling across ancient parchment in ways that made my healer's senses scream in warning.

Alexandros lay wounded before us, his blood soaking into sand already dark with death. Around us, our friends – our family – scattered like broken dolls, all dying from a battle we couldn't win. The air tasted of copper and desperation, thick with smoke that turned Greek sunlight strange and terrible.

“There's a spell,” Valerius said, his voice catching on tears or smoke or both. “A way to give them another chance. All of them.” His hands shook as he opened the book to a page that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. “A way to ensure the souls we love are never truly lost.”

Ancient words began falling from his lips, each syllable cutting through battlefield chaos like knives. Power gathered around us, heavy as storm clouds, hungry as open graves. My hands – Elias'shands – never stopped working, trying to keep Alexandros's blood inside his body even as Valerius's spell reached for something that should have remained untouched.

“It came with a price,” Vale's present voice overlaid with Valerius's past, pulling me halfway back to his study. “One would remember, searching lifetimes to find their love. One would forget, protected from the pain of remembering. The others would live new lives, unknowing.”

His voice broke on the last word, centuries of regret bleeding through. “I thought I was saving you all. Giving you chances to find happiness in other lives. Instead...”

The memory shifted, fractal-like, showing me glimpses of lives I'd lived and forgotten. Renaissance Italy, where I painted masterpieces but never met Alexandros's eyes across crowded rooms. Paris in the 1920s, where our paths crossed too late, after he'd married another. London during the Blitz, where bombs fell before we could speak the truth we both felt.

Life after life, death after death, always finding each other just slightly wrong. Always reaching for connection that slipped through our fingers like smoke.

“The spell twisted,” Vale continued, his words pulling me fully back to his study. “Power like that – it has its own ideas about how it should be used. Its own way of ensuring the price is paid in full.”

My hands remembered everything now – not just the lives I'd lived, but the ones I'd missed. The almost-meetings, the near-misses, the moments when fate or circumstance or simple human fear had kept us apart.

“So you remember everything?” I asked, my voice rough with borrowed grief. “Every life, every death, every time we failed to get it right?”

“Every moment.” Vale's smile held edges sharp enough to cut. “That was my price, you see. To watch, to remember, to try to guide without interfering directly. To carry the weight of knowing while everyone else got to forget.”

“What about Marcus?” Alex asked, his fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around mine. “Does he remember too?”

Vale's laugh was something between a chuckle and a knife's edge. “Marcus? He's not like the rest of us. He's... older. More complicated.” A distant look came into his eyes, something between reverence and caution. “Marcus doesn't just remember. He's been the architect of more cycles than any of us could comprehend.”

“What does that mean?” I pressed, the surgeon in me demanding precision.

“Some of us remember,” Vale explained, “some of us guide. Marcus? He observes. He calculates. Sometimes I think he's been playing a game so long that even he's forgotten the original rules.” He leaned forward, his intensity burning through the room. “Marcus has seen civilizations rise and fall. He's watched us repeat our patterns, our mistakes, our moments of desperate love. He doesn't just remember – he understands the fundamental rhythms of our existence in a way none of us can.”

Alex's hand found mine, warm and solid in this moment that felt both ancient and new. “But something's changed,” he said quietly. “The pattern is shifting.”

“Because of Will.” Vale moved to a cabinet I hadn't noticed before, its wood so dark it seemed to swallow light. “His soul... it remembers things from before the spell. Before the temples. Before civilization itself.”

He removed something that made the air feel thick with possibility – a small vial filled with liquid too dark to be natural. “My blood,” he explained, holding it up to catch lamplight. “Part of the original spell. The key to breaking it.”

The vial seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat, ancient power calling to the healer in me – not the modern surgeon, but something older. Something that remembered preparing medicines by moonlight and binding wounds with blessed herbs.

“With this,” Vale continued, his hands steady as he offered it to us, “you can end the cycle. Choose to remember or forget, liveone life or many. I've carried this burden long enough. Watched you suffer long enough.”

“Why now?” I asked, though part of me already knew the answer.

“Because Will's memories are surfacing too fast, too violently.” Vale set the vial on his desk with infinite care. “He's remembering power that should have died when the first temples fell. Knowledge that could unravel more than just my spell.”

Alex's grip on my hand tightened slightly. “The night in my office,” he said quietly. “When he attacked me. He was remembering, wasn't he?”

“Fragments.” Vale's correction was gentle but firm. “Pieces of truth his soul shouldn't be able to access. But each time he sees you together, each time the pattern tries to reassert itself...” He gestured at the artifacts surrounding us. “It gets harder to contain. Harder to protect him from knowledge that could destroy him – destroy everything.”

The vial caught lamplight like captured stars, its contents moving in ways that defied physics. My hands itched to touch it, to understand its mysteries with healer's senses that remembered preparing medicines in ancient temples.

“What's the catch?” I asked, medical training making me look for complications, for hidden costs.

Vale's smile held no humor, only ancient understanding. “The catch is choice. Real choice, for the first time since I cast the spell. You could choose to remember everything – every life, every love, every moment of finding and losing each other. Or...”

“Or we could choose to forget,” Alex finished softly. “Live one normal life, free from all of this”

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