The realization should terrify me, but the terror doesn't come. Nothing comes. I'm a void wrapped in the shape of a person, emotions existing as concepts I understand intellectually but can't seem tofeel.
Hollow.
That's the word. I feel hollow—a vessel emptied of everything that once filled it, leaving only the outline of what I was. The shape persists but the substance has fled, and I can't even mourn its absence because mourning requires emotion I no longer possess.
But something glows.
Incantations crawl across my translucent form, golden symbols pulsing with light that seems desperate. They're trying to hold me together, I realize—these ancient markings that write and rewrite themselves across skin that doesn't quite exist. They burn with intensity that increases each time I focus on them, as if the magic itself knows I'm fading and refuses to let me go.
Life force.
The words arrive from somewhere deep, somewhere that remembers even when I don't. These incantations are my life force made visible, the fundamental essence of whatever I am fighting to maintain coherence against the pull of dissolution.
I try to remember.
The effort is like grasping smoke—the harder I reach, the faster it escapes. Fragments surface and sink again: crimson eyes, shadow tendrils, the taste of copper, the heat of scales, the cold of frost, a crown of flames that I might have worn or mighthave dreamed. Each memory dissolves before I can examine it, leaving only the ache of loss without the understanding of what I've lost.
Who am I?
The question echoes through my hollow chest, bouncing off walls that should contain a heart but find only empty space. I tilt my head to one side, examining my glowing hands with detached curiosity. The incantations pulse faster at the movement, as if worried I might shake them loose.
Something important. I was something important. Someone important? The concepts blur together, importance and identity becoming interchangeable and equally meaningless.
Everything or nothing?
I can't determine which I've forgotten. Perhaps both. Perhaps they're the same thing in this place where even confusion feels distant, observed rather than experienced.
"You can't be here."
The voice arrives from everywhere and nowhere—soft, melodic, carrying undertones of authority and concern that make my incantations flare brighter. I frown at the sound, the expression feeling foreign on a face I'm not sure I actually possess.
Why can't I be here?
The thought forms with mild irritation that's the closest thing to emotion I've managed since arriving. Being told I don't belong somewhere feels wrong, though I can't remember why I might have the right to belong anywhere.
I turn toward the voice.
The figure standing behind me steals whatever breath ghosts are capable of drawing.
She'sbeautiful.
Not in the sharp-edged way I vaguely remember beauty being—all angles and danger and carefully constructed walls.This is different. Softer. The kind of beauty that comes from being loved so thoroughly that gentleness has become part of her bone structure, tenderness woven into the fall of silver hair that cascades past her waist like a waterfall of starlight.
She looks like me.
The realization hits with distant surprise. The same silver hair, though hers is somehow more lustrous. The same impossible eyes, though hers lack the harshness I can sense in my own even without being able to see them. The same bone structure, though years of smiling have carved different lines—laugh lines around eyes that know joy, soft curves around a mouth familiar with expressing love.
She's what I could have been.
Should have been, maybe, if the world I can't remember had been kinder. If whatever carved me into sharp edges had chosen gentleness instead. Looking at her is like looking at a mirror that reflects not what is but what might have been, and even through the void of my current emotional state, somethingaches.
"Who are you?"
The words emerge rougher than intended, the question carrying weight I don't fully understand.
She walks toward me with grace that makes the flowers bow as she passes, their impossible colors brightening at her proximity. Each step she takes seems to solidify reality around her, the dreamlike quality of this place becoming more concrete, morereal, the closer she gets.
When she stops before me, I have to look up slightly to meet her gaze. The height difference is subtle but present—she's what I could grow into, if growing is something ghosts can do.
