September 1918 had carved itself into Edward’s memory like a scar that refused to heal. It was the month that altered the course of his existence forever — the month he lost his life, his humanity… and you.

His sister.

Edward Anthony Masen died that autumn, consumed by the Spanish influenza that ravaged Chicago. But Edward Cullen was born in his place, swept into immortality by Carlisle’s mercy and carried off into a world he never asked for. A world where he was forced to leave everything, and everyone, behind.

Including you.

He never said goodbye. Never heard your voice one last time. Never saw your face as he slipped away and became something else.

All he had left now were fading fragments — a flash of your grin, the warmth of your hand tugging his, the memory of you calling his name. But even those were blurring at the edges, dissolving as the decades stretched on endlessly.

It was as if time was erasing you. As if he were losing you again.

So when he was walking through the crowded streets of town beside his siblings — with Bella Swan’s heartbeat a gentle percussion in the background — Edward wasn’t prepared at all.

He wasn’t prepared to see you. Or someone who looked impossibly, hauntingly like you. For a moment, the world tilted. His undead heart seized. His steps faltered.

No. It couldn’t be you. You were gone. Buried. Human.

This stranger was an illusion — wishful thinking, a ghost conjured by grief and a century of longing. Edward told himself he was hallucinating, unraveling, finally losing his mind after years of immortality.

But he wasn’t. Because it was you.

His sister: his blood, his past, standing there in the modern world — unchanged in age — yet irrevocably transformed.

And as your eyes lifted to meet his, Edward saw the truth reflected in them: not the warm human shade he once knew, but a striking, familiar topaz.

The eyes of immortality. Just like his.