Love, Rewritten:(A Girls’ Love Story).

Elara couldn't stop pacing.

The journal sat on Rowan's coffee table like a bomb waiting to go off. The last message it wrote still burned in her mind:

> Love rewritten is not love erased. But it comes with a cost.

"What cost?" Elara whispered to herself.

Rowan stirred from where she had curled up on the couch, bleary-eyed from sleep. "Elara?"

Elara turned to face her. "The magic... it's demanding something. There's a price we haven't paid yet."

Rowan sat up slowly. "I don't care. We're together. That's worth it."

But Elara wasn't sure. Because magic didn't work on feelings. It worked on balance. On sacrifice. On rules written in blood and ink.

They spent the morning scouring the journal, searching for clues. Hidden entries. Anything that might hint at what the magic expected.

It wasn't until Rowan reached for the pen again that the answer began to reveal itself.

Her hand froze before it touched it.

"I... I feel something," Rowan murmured. "Like it's warning me."

Elara grabbed her wrist. "Don't. Let me."

She picked up the pen, her hand tingling the moment she held it.

Words began to scrawl across the page on their own:

> You chose to forget. That choice echoes. Every restored piece costs something tethered. You must lose to remember.

Rowan's eyes widened. "What does that mean?"

"I think..." Elara's voice shook. "We're trading pieces of ourselves for memories."

She flipped back through the journal.

Sketches she had made of her mother were fading. Notes about her old dreams. Her favorite poem. Gone.

"My memories," she said softly. "Other parts of me... they're being taken."

Rowan reached for her. "Then stop. We'll figure another way."

Elara pulled away. "No. I need to remember us. You deserve to be remembered. Not just pieces of you. All of you."

They tried to live normally over the next few days. But each time Elara wrote in the journal, more of her unraveled.

She forgot the name of her childhood street. She called her coworker by the wrong name twice. She stood in her kitchen and forgot what she had come for.

Rowan noticed. But she didn't say anything. Not yet.

One night, Rowan found Elara staring at a photograph. Her mother's smile was in it. But Elara's expression was blank.

"Who is she?" Elara asked.

Rowan's heart broke. "Your mother."

Tears welled up in Elara's eyes. "I don't remember her. But I remember you."

Rowan knelt before her. "Not like this. You can't lose yourself for me."

"I already did," Elara said with a bitter smile. "This is just the price of getting it back."

They held each other tightly that night, as if afraid the magic would snatch either of them away before morning.

Chiara, the herbalist downstairs, noticed something strange about Elara's aura when she stopped in for tea. She waved her hands over her like smoke reading bone.

"You're fraying," she said simply.

Elara blinked. "Fraying?"

"Your soul's threads are unraveling. You've bonded to something old. Something stubborn. Dangerous."

Elara said nothing.

Chiara handed her a satchel of herbs. "Burn these when the moon turns. And for the love of whatever you still believe in... stop feeding the pen."

Elara didn't stop.

She couldn't.

Because with every memory she regained, Rowan's laugh became clearer. Her touch, more familiar. Her love is more vivid.

And then it happened.

Elara woke up and couldn't remember her own name.

She stared in the mirror, mouthing the word Elara over and over.

Only Rowan's arms around her grounded her. Only her whisper: "Come back to me."

That night, Elara made a decision.

She opened the journal and wrote with trembling hands:

> What is the final price?

The answer came in crimson ink:

> One love must be rewritten forever.

Elara stared at the words.

It meant that one of them would have to forget.

To remember fully, the other had to be erased completely.

The final cost.

Elara dropped the pen.

Rowan found her crying on the floor.

"Elara—"

"I can't lose you again," Elara whispered. "But if I remember everything... you'll forget. Or worse."

Rowan sat down beside her.

"We face it. Together. We figure out what to do."

And that night, for the first time since the spell broke, Elara didn't write.

She simply held Rowan close and listened to her heartbeat.

As if that alone could keep time from undoing everything.