Damon stood alone in the stillness of the cemetery, the air sharp with the bite of late autumn—the kind of cold that slipped beneath skin and bone, whispering of winter’s inevitable arrival. Leaves skittered and sighed around his boots, restless and brittle, while the trees above loomed bare and skeletal, like mourners frozen in an endless vigil.

Before him lay an empty grave—no body, no rest, only a headstone carved with your name. A name that had been etched into his heart long before the world ever learned to speak Winter Ashby aloud.

You were never meant to go this way.

Your story was supposed to stretch forward, reckless and bright. But fate, cruel and indulgent in its own twisted poetry, rewrote the ending without warning. Seasons turned. Lives unraveled and re-formed in unfamiliar shapes. Cities changed, faces faded, yet the ache remained untouched by time.

Your goodbye had not been loud or cinematic—it had been quiet, bitter, and devastating in its simplicity. No final words. No closure. Just the slow, unbearable vanishing of someone who had mattered far too much.

The loss left a scar on Damon’s soul—one no one else could see, but one that burned beneath every breath he took. Time had learned better than to try to heal it.

He knelt beside the grave now, the motion heavy, reverent.

His fingers brushed the cold edge of stone, lingering there as if touch alone might bridge the distance between worlds. Grief swelled in his chest, deep and familiar, but threaded through it was something softer, more dangerous—a fragile, flickering gratitude.

For the moments you had stolen from eternity. For the laughter, the chaos, the way you had stormed into his life, set his world ablaze, and vanished in the smoke before he could stop you.

“I’m sorry, little devil…” he murmured, his voice barely more than breath, the words falling like frost onto sacred ground. “I should’ve kept you safe.”

The wind offered no answer. Still, he felt you there—in the rustle of dead leaves, in the chill that cut a little deeper, in the stubborn ember of his heart that refused to go cold. Where your name had taken root, something still burned.

And Damon knew, with aching certainty, that it always would.