CHAPTER 23: The Memory Keeper
411 Words
Light.
Warm. Soft. Almost gentle.
Czar opened his eyes—
but he wasn’t Czar anymore.
He was lying on a bed of black roses in a world soaked in golden mist.
His arms were no longer his.
They were thinner. Paler. Bruised.
He sat up, and a wave of nausea crashed through him.
A mirror stood near the roses.
He crawled toward it—
and screamed without sound.
---
He saw a girl’s face.
Familiar.
Terrifying.
Diva.
---
“No… no, this isn’t right,” he thought.
His hands—her hands—gripped the edge of the mirror, trembling.
This world had taken his body—
but not his soul.
The hourglass had kept its bargain:
> “Only one will remain.”
But who remained?
---
He looked around.
The golden mist whispered with voices that weren’t human.
Above him, the upside-down trees.
The pink flowers with black stems.
The same garden.
But it had changed.
It was cracking.
Wilting.
Because someone had pulled the lever.
---
Then, he heard it.
Faint.
A song.
🎵 “All of me… loves all of you…” 🎵
The duet.
The one they had practiced.
His voice.
And hers.
---
He ran toward the sound—
his breath catching in her lungs.
And there, across a split in the world, stood the real Diva.
Alive.
Singing.
But tears in her eyes.
Next to her… a gravestone.
He couldn't see the name.
But he knew.
It was his.
---
He reached out, but the world cracked again.
They were in two timelines now.
Two different realities.
She was singing to a memory.
And he was trapped in a version of her—
to keep the story alive.
---
He fell to his knees.
The garden rumbled.
The Librarian appeared again, his cloak dripping with fading constellations.
“You pulled the lever,” he said.
Czar looked up.
“Why am I her?”
“Because she couldn’t carry the pain.”
“So I carry it for her?”
“No,” the Librarian said softly. “You carry it so that one day, if she ever forgets what love looks like… you can remind her.”
---
The garden began to close.
The mist pulling Czar into the mirror world.
As he faded, he whispered:
“Diva… if you ever hear me,
remember the boy who made you furious,
made you cry,
but would’ve ruined the stars to make you smile.”
- Writer
