I wake with a start, gasping for air that doesn't feel real in my lungs. The sterile white room of the afterlife checkpoint fades around me, replaced by the familiar clutter of my New York apartment. But something's different—the air hums with a faint golden light I can almost taste, like the residual magic after a particularly powerful spell.

A soft knock at my bedroom door makes my heart leap into my throat. No one should be here. Everyone thinks I'm dead.

Before I can respond, the door creaks open. There he stands—Eliot—alive and whole, leaning against the doorframe with that devastating combination of casual elegance and emotional vulnerability he so rarely shows. His eyes meet mine, and in that moment, I see everything: the grief, the hope, the decades of unspoken words between us.

"You're awake," he says, his voice catching on the words like they physically hurt to say. He takes a step forward into the room, and I notice the leather-bound book in his hands—the same book that brought me back, that connects our fates across time.

The weight of a hundred indecisions hangs in the air between us. This is our chance to finally get it right. The question is, after everything we've lost and regained, how do I begin?