SWNOVELXO Chapter 7: Chapter 7: The City That Forgot My Name
"I have died in this city. And still, it welcomes me like a home that doesn't care who it buries."
The gates of Virelles loomed before me like ancient teeth, jagged and blackened by time.
Not polished like the palaces they protect, but cracked - as if even stone could remember the screams it had once swallowed.
I had died here.
In this very city.
Once in fire, once in silence, once in a kiss that never finished its promise.
And now I walked back into it like a ghost looking for her own bones.
I entered through the East Gate at dusk, tucked between a spice merchant and a cart of velvet bolts that stank of perfumed lies.
No one looked twice.
Why would they?
I wore dirt like armor and silence like perfume.
In a city of illusions, invisibility was the sharpest mask you could wear.
But as I crossed the threshold, a sudden wind surged through the stones - strong enough to lift my hood slightly, cold enough to remind me that memory, like magic, never dies.
For a brief second, it felt like the city exhaled… as if it knew I had returned.
Virelles was always beautiful in the worst kind of way.
A poet's city. A priest's stage. A murderer's playground.
From its stained-glass cathedrals to its underground markets, every wall had secrets.
And every secret had once been mine.
The crowds thickened as I made my way down Mercy Spine, the main road that cut through the heart of the city.
A noblewoman brushed past me, her laugh too loud, her hands too jeweled.
Behind her, a priest chanted prayers that smelled more like politics than devotion.
And above us all, far in the distance, the Spire of Flame stood tall - the central tower of the royal palace, burning golden in the last light of day.
Somewhere inside it… he stood.
Kaelith.
My curse.
My love.
The boy who kept forgetting me.
The man who kept dying after.
I could feel him before I saw him - the echo of his heartbeat brushing against mine like a song I didn't want to hear again.
He was here.
And for the first time in this life, so was I.
I took lodging in the Glass Quarter, where the shadows were longer, and the rent was paid in secrets.
The inn I chose had no sign. Just a cracked bell hanging from the archway and a door that creaked like it was still trying to warn people away.
The innkeeper was older than the walls. Blind in one eye, tired in the other.
"Room?" he asked, voice low, breath wheezing through crooked teeth.
"Something quiet," I said.
He slid a key across the counter without asking for a name.
But as my hand touched the key, his fingers clutched mine.
"Don't let the dreams in," he whispered.
"They knock first."
I froze.
"Excuse me?" He didn't repeat himself. He simply nodded toward the stairs.
So I climbed, heart pounding harder than it should have.
The room was small. Cold. But it had a window - one that faced the palace.
I stood there long after the sun had vanished, staring at the tallest tower like it might blink.
I didn't sleep.
I haven't, not properly, in years.
Sleep is where memory waits.
And memory is where he bleeds.
But in the castle - Kaelith did sleep.
And that was the problem.
"The dreams again?" the healer asked, placing herbs on his table.
"They're not dreams," Kaelith muttered.
"They're memories I've never lived."
He stared at his hands.
They felt heavier. Burnt.
Like they'd once held something that should've never been lost.
In the dream, it was raining. Not water - but ash. Soft. Slow. Endless.
A girl stood at the center of it.
Barefoot. Silent. Waiting.
Her eyes were fire. Her skin held stories. Her mouth, tragedy.
She said nothing at first. Just stared at him like she'd known every version of him across time.
"I don't know you," he whispered.
"That's the curse," she replied.
"Not that you forget.
But that I never can."
He reached for her.
And in that moment, a thousand feathers exploded from her body - white, burning, falling like snow that remembered its origin in flame.
Kaelith woke choking. Hands clutching at air.
On the floor beside his bed…
A single white feather, edges singed black.
Meanwhile, I had opened the book.
The Volundari, its cover stitched from leather older than kings.
It flipped its own pages - as if it knew exactly what I needed, before I could need it.
On the center page, a new line bled into the parchment:
"He will not remember your name.
But he will remember your death."
I slammed it shut.
My heart was an ache that had outlived its rhythm.
"Not this time," I whispered.
"This time, I am not here to die."
Tomorrow, I would walk into the palace.
Not as a girl.
Not as a ghost.
As the curse wearing a crown of purpose.
And this time…
Kaelith would remember.
Even if it destroyed him.