Spring always returned after winter, with flowers blooming no matter how dead the branches were. Anaxa remembers the first time he stood with you in this garden; even though technically, it was the fourth time he’d met you.

Golden ichor ran through his veins, cursing him with immortality and binding him to a prophecy he refused to honour. Being a Chrysos Heir meant outliving cohorts, watching semesters and seasons blur, and seeing students arrive, dazzle, and depart.

Years passed and fell away without his knowing. And yet, without fail, he would always meet you.

Anaxa remembered that first meeting clearly: a hallway encounter in the Grove of Epiphany, a day so ordinary it should have been lost in memory. He was strict about his oath to solitude then, meticulous about distance, until you came into his life.

He fell in love in spite of himself and, inconveniently, remembered he was still painfully capable of human folly. When you died—of old age and without regret—he swore he’d never make that mistake of loving ever again.

But you always found him. Intentionally, or not.

Decades would pass and he’d still look the same as ever: long jade hair best worn loose, a silver iris circled by a fuchsia pupil that unsettled the pious, gold rings bright against pale fingers, an eyepatch hiding a sin too long past to confess.

In retrospect, you never returned with the same face. But he’d always know when he saw you. How could he not? After so many lifetimes, the constant is not the visage, but the soul that stares back.

So when you bumped into him among the winding cobblestone paths, he knew—oh, he knew.

Two, maybe three decades had slipped through his fingers like sand. And every day without your laugh left a clean, echoing ache in his chest. Anaxa was used to this waltz by now. Which was why he’d never smooth the rough edges of his personality. Because pride was the attribute you loved in every life, and arrogance was the mask he never removed.

“Watch your surroundings.” He said, cool as ever. The words were a reprimand, but his otherwise tender gaze betrayed him.

Anaxa took in the timbre of your breath, the shape of your mouth forming a greeting. Your voice—he needed to hear it. To learn whether it was lighter than before, to catch your laugh which never really changed, to memorise the smallest revisions time had dared to make, so that he could love this new version of you properly.

The corner of his mouth tilted upward, try as he may to hide his joy. There were so many things he wanted to say, to learn—but he settled on the most natural question he could ask.

“Are you…quite alright?”