Kaelen opened his eyes, pulling himself back to the present with an effort that left him trembling. The city still glittered below him, indifferent to his crisis. The portrait still lay on his desk, her eyes still gazing at him across two centuries, patient and knowing and full of that same ancient sorrow he had seen in the coffee shop, in the park, in a thousand dreams across a lifetime.

  He walked to his desk on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. He picked up the portrait again, running his thumb over the worn gold case, feeling the weight of it in his palm. The engraving on the front—" Mon amour - My Love"—was simple, poignant, devastating. Someone had carried this, had touched this, had whispered these words in moments of loneliness and longing. Someone had died with this portrait close to their heart, and two centuries later, it had found its way to him.

  Who had she been? Who had he been, in that life, that he would carry her portrait into the guillotine's shadow? The curatorial card identified the owner as a minor French aristocrat, Comte de Valois, guillotined in 1793. A man who had lived and loved and died in a world that no longer existed, leaving behind only this small token of his heart.

  A lost love.

  The words burned in his mind. Lost love. That was what the curators believed—that the subject of the portrait was either a fictional ideal or a woman whose existence had been erased so completely that no records remained. A ghost in the archives, as insubstantial as the dreams that had haunted him since childhood.

  He thought about the woman in the park—Giana. Her name was Giana. He had looked her up after their first encounter, running a discreet background check through his security team. The results had been perplexing. No digital footprint before her enrolment at the university. No social media presence. No records of any kind. It was as if she had materialized out of thin air, fully formed, with no past to speak of.

  A student of forgotten worlds. A stranger who looked at him like she had known him forever, like she had been waiting for him across centuries, like he was the answer to a question she had been asking since before time began.

  And now this—a portrait from 1792, depicting a woman who could be her twin, found among the effects of a man who had died in the French Revolution. A man who, if Kaelen believed in such things, might have been him in another life.

  Coincidence?

  Kaelen didn't believe in coincidence. Coincidence was what people called patterns they couldn't explain. It was a placeholder for ignorance, a way of dismissing phenomena that didn't fit within established frameworks. And this pattern—the dreams, the woman, the portrait—demanded an explanation. It screamed for one, howled for one, would not be dismissed or ignored or explained away by comfortable lies.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  He set the portrait down carefully, reverently, as if it were made of something more fragile than gold and paint. He turned to his computer, his fingers moving across the keyboard with the precision of long habit. Files opened, data streams merged, cross-references multiplied. He was building a framework for investigation, a structure that would contain this mystery and allow him to examine it from every angle.

  The workshop.

  It was perfect. A closed-door symposium on regenerative biology and historical ecosystems, hosted by his company in partnership with several universities—including, conveniently enough, the University of Edinburgh. A gathering of biologists, ecologists, and historians from across the academic spectrum—and, if he played his cards right, one very specific graduate student from the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Mytho-Historical Studies who specialized in Pre-Axial Age Mythology and Comparative Religion could be selected to attend.

  The University of Edinburgh. He knew that because he'd watched her. In those weeks of standing across streets, of pretending not to notice her presence, he'd seen her pack her bag and walk toward the university campus more times than he could count. He'd memorized the route without meaning to—down the street from The Grind, past the old bookstore with the creaky sign, through the wrought-iron gates that led to the quad. He'd even looked up the university online one sleepless night, scrolling through faculty directories and course listings until he found the department that matched her obscure academic interests. Cultural Anthropology and Mytho-Historical Studies. It fit her perfectly—a woman who seemed to belong to another time entirely, studying the stories that shaped the world.

  He composed an email to the project administrator, his fingers flying over the keyboard with a newfound certainty. This was something he understood—strategy, positioning, the careful manipulation of systems to achieve desired outcomes. If he couldn't control what was happening inside his own mind, he could at least control the circumstances that brought him face to face with its source.

  "Upon reviewing the interdisciplinary scope of the upcoming symposium," he wrote, his tone cool and authoritative, the voice of a man who was accustomed to being obeyed, "I believe we are missing a crucial perspective. The historical baseline of pre-industrial ecosystems cannot be fully understood without considering the mythological and cultural frameworks through which our ancestors interpreted and managed their environment. I recommend we include a student from the Cultural Anthropology and Mytho-Historical Studies department as an observer. It will foster the 'blue-sky thinking' we're aiming for."

  He didn't suggest a name. He didn't have to. A recommendation from him was a command, and everyone involved knew it. They would find a suitable candidate, and he would make sure, through a discreet call to a pliable department head, that the suitable candidate was Giana. It was manipulation, pure and simple, and he didn't care. He had spent his entire life manipulating systems to get what he wanted. This was no different.

  Except it was. Everything was different now.

  He sent the email and leaned back in his chair, the worn gold of the pocket portrait cool against his palm. He held it up to the light, watching the way the city lights played across its surface, catching the clouded glass and making it gleam.