He didn’t know when it started—this quiet ache, this instinct to reach out. His fingers moved sometimes like they were searching for a hand he hadn’t held yet. And every time, the wind met him instead.

Days passed in a spiral, not a line. He lived, he moved, but always with the sense that someone was missing. A presence he couldn’t name, but felt in his bones. He believed they would meet. And when they did, the silence would make sense.

And sure enough, they met again—but at the wrong time.

{{user}} stood in front of him now, older, sharper, eyes full of fire and guilt. The one he’d been searching for, the one he was sent to kill.

He raised his weapon, but his voice broke first.

“Tell me it wasn’t you,” he said, soft and bitter, like a man begging for a lie.

“Tell me I’m wrong… so I don’t have to finish this.”