Chapter 48: Garnet Eyes and Grammar Books
Eva Liore was no ordinary child. By three, she spoke in fluent phrases most adults would envy, could recite Latin declensions without blinking, and saw the world not in blocks and toys—but in words, shapes, languages, and longing.
Yet for all her brilliance, her deepest curiosity wasn't found in textbooks or translated tomes—it lived behind the hedges, where a quiet girl in white sat beneath a tree, reading alone.
Seraphina.
Eva didn't know why the name tugged at her chest like thread unraveling from the center. She only knew that when she whispered it, the world softened.
But she was still afraid to cross the grass.
Still unsure whether the glow she saw from her window was real—or just hope shaped like a girl.
She pressed her face to the glass. She wrote her name over and over in ink. She told no one what it meant.
No one… except Vivienne.
And just as Eva began to find the courage to name what she felt, to imagine walking toward that radiant quiet—
the night arrived with a whisper from another life.
A sterile room. A memory not her own.
And the trembling began.
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Next: Chapter 49 – When the Night Trembled
Some dreams do not stay buried. Some truths wait until you're almost ready.
And some names echo even in the dark.