They began the ritual that same evening, sitting together at the small kitchen table in the cabin, Elena's notes spread carefully between them like a map neither of them fully trusted yet but both were willing to follow.

"Tell me something you're afraid of losing," Ezra said. "Something specific. Not the general fear. The actual memory."

Lucien considered, then spoke slowly, deliberately, the way a man handles something breakable. "The rain. The night we walked home soaked through, and you kissed me under a streetlight because neither of us cared anymore about looking foolish."

"I remember it exactly," Ezra said, and then, following his own instruction, described it back to...