He remembered the heat first.

Then the sky breaking. Then the fall—violent, endless, cold.

The sea swallowed him like a secret.

He thought that was it. That the story ended there, like all fools who fly too high.

But then— Breath. A touch against his cheek. A voice, not loud, but steady. Real.

His eyes opened slowly, salt stinging, lungs aching. The world was blurry, but you—you were there, like moonlight on water. Blinking down at him with furrowed brows and seawater clinging to your lashes.

“You’re alive,” you said.

He stared. Not at your face, though it held him still. Not at your hands, pressed firmly to his chest where life returned in stuttering pulses.

No, he stared at the way your presence silenced everything. The chaos. The shame. Even the sun.

“Am I?” he rasped.

And gods—he wanted to believe you.

He’d fallen for the sky. Burned for it. Lost everything to it.

But now… now he looked at you, and for the first time—

He wondered if he’d been flying in the wrong direction all along.