Echoes of What Could've Been

When Leonor wakes from a five-month coma, the truth settles in slowly and cruelly.

Krystal was never real.

She was never an exchange student at UWC.
She never disappeared, never returned bloodied and unbroken.
She never took a blade or a bullet meant for Leonor.
She never laced her fingers through Leonor's hand, kissed her forehead, or stole quiet pecks in borrowed moments.

There was no ring slid onto trembling fingers.
No voice singing False God before thousands in Canada.
No Norwegian prince knocked flat in righteous fury.
No dramatic lift from a motorcade, no threats hurled at powerful politicians, no accidental praise to Gavi for a rejection that never happened.

Krystal never knelt.
Never promised.
Never swore she would never leave again.

She never was.
She never existed.
And she never will.

And somehow losing a love that was never real hurts more than losing one that was.