When forever turned to ruins

Some forevers don't end. They break you until nothing is left.

Esther's forever did not shatter in an instant-it decayed.
She watched cancer eat away at her husband until there was nothing left of the man she once loved. She held her child through endless nights of mourning, only to lose them too when grief proved heavier than life itself. Esther buried her world in two graves. After that, she moved through life like a shadow breathing out of habit, smiling out of obligation, existing without ever living. She told herself they were gone. She told herself forever was finished. But grief is merciless. It lies. And some husbands are never truly dead.

Alaric's forever ended in fire and blood. His wife. His child. His soul. For ten years he hunted the men who stole them, drowning his hands in vengeance until the last body fell. But vengeance leaves only silence. It cannot fill an empty heart. It cannot bring back the dead.

When Esther and Alaric's paths cross, it is not love. It is grief recognizing grief two souls carved open by loss, clinging to each other not out of hope, but because they have nothing else. Yet even in ruin, the past waits. And when it rises, Esther will face the cruelest truth:

What she mourned was never gone.
And what comes back is no longer hers.