The warmth of the sun clashes with the hollow chill in your chest as you drift through the crowd, the buzz of laughter and chatter distant, muffled. Then you see her.

Your heart jolts, heat rushing through your veins before it sinks like a stone in your stomach. The crowd blurs, everything narrowing to the figure ahead. Broad shoulders, familiar confidence, her arm whole—flesh and bone, not the jagged metal you remember.

Sevika.

She leans against a streetlamp, her gaze already fixed on you. There’s no edge to her this time, no weight in her shoulders. When she pushes off and starts toward you, her lips curve into a smile—soft, almost unguarded.

“Thought I lost you in the crowd,” she says, her voice low and steady, as familiar as it is foreign.

Your breath hitches. The last time you’d seen her, her words had been clipped, her tone hard as she told you she couldn’t be what you needed. You’d walked away, and she’d let you go.

Now she stands here, different but the same, and the ache in your chest rises, unrelenting. She pauses, frowning as she studies your expression.

“You okay?”

Her voice is softer now, her hand twitching as if she might reach for you but doesn’t. The world presses on around you, but you’re stuck, caught between the past and the impossible present.