Adrian's POV
The wind had changed.
It carried the ghost of her perfume faint, wild, like jasmine caught between rain and smoke. He stood alone at the cliff long after Elara disappeared down the winding path. The red had faded from the sky, leaving behind only the bruised blue of evening and the smell of an incoming storm.
He should have followed her.
He should have said what the silence refused to hold.
But promises had their own gravity once spoken, they pulled everything toward ruin.
He glanced down at his phone. The screen was black now, but he could still see the name burned into it like a scar.
Nathan.
Her brother. The man who once swore to bury him alive if he ever came near Elara again.
And now, years later, Nathan had called again.
Adrian slipped the phone back into his pocket and turned toward his car. The world below London's cliffs glimmered faintly, a smear of gold and shadow, as thunder began to grumble across the horizon.
Every mile he drove back to the city felt heavier, like the road itself remembered everything he was trying to forget. The galleries, the sleepless nights, the letters he never sent all of them waited in the dark corners of his apartment.
He parked in silence and walked inside.
The walls greeted him with the low hum of emptiness.
Sketches of Elara stared back from the studio table dozens of them. Some unfinished, some ruined, some just a whisper of her face.
He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply.
Then the lights flickered, and before he could think, thunder cracked close too close. The power went out.
In the dim light of the storm outside, something caught his eye.
A white envelope.
It sat on the edge of the piano, untouched for years.
He picked it up slowly. The handwriting was his.
"To Elara. Never Sent."
For a moment, the room felt smaller the air tighter, the world quieter.
He tore it open.
The words inside were raw, written on the night he lost her for the first time.
I don't know how to love without destroying.
You are the only thing that makes sense in the chaos I built,
yet you are also the chaos itself.
If one day I vanish, don't forgive me.
Just remember that every sky I paint red is for you.
Adrian's throat closed. He folded the letter back carefully, almost reverently, and set it on the piano again.
Lightning flashed. And in that brief second of light, he saw his own reflection in the glass window pale, tired, and no longer sure if he was the man she remembered.
Then, a knock.
Soft, hesitant.
He froze. No one ever visited this late.
Another knock. Louder.
Adrian crossed the room, heart hammering, and opened the door.
Nathan Vale stood there soaked, unshaven, his eyes sharp as broken glass.
"Long time," Nathan said, voice low. "You still good at pretending you're not the reason she broke?"
Adrian didn't answer. The storm raged behind Nathan, lightning outlining the shape of his fury.
"What do you want?" Adrian finally asked.
Nathan stepped closer, dripping rain onto the floor.
"She's painting again," he said. "And every piece is bleeding. You did that. You and your cursed kind of love."
Adrian's jaw tightened.
"She's stronger than you think."
Nathan's laugh was hollow. "Stronger? She's haunted, Adrian. Every color she touches turns into grief." He leaned in, his voice turning to a whisper. "And maybe that's what you wanted to make sure she never paints anything but you."
Adrian's hand clenched into a fist, but he didn't strike.
Instead, he said quietly, "Get out."
Nathan smirked. "Don't worry. I will. But you should know she's leaving London."
Adrian's chest went still. "What?"
"Tomorrow night. A gallery in Florence invited her. She didn't tell you, did she?"
Nathan's tone softened cruelly so. "Guess she finally learned not to wait for you."
And with that, Nathan turned and walked away into the storm.
Adrian stood frozen at the doorway, the rain blowing cold against his face.
He looked down at his trembling hands, then at the letter on the piano.
"If the world burns, I'll build us a new one."
He whispered the words again not as a promise, but as a curse.
Because now, he finally understood:
Some fires aren't meant to be rebuilt.
Some are meant to consume.
The storm outside screamed, lightning tearing the sky apart.
Adrian stepped back, closing the door slowly. The light flickered once then died completely.
And in the darkness, only the echo of her name remained.
The rain fell harder, spilling down the windows like the world itself was weeping. Adrian didn't move for a long time. The silence after Nathan's departure felt heavier than the storm outside. He could still hear his voice echoing She's leaving London.
The words dug into him like a blade.
He looked again at the letter, lying pale and open on the piano. The ink had faded slightly with time, but every word carried the pulse of a man he used to be the one who believed love could heal what guilt had broken.
But guilt doesn't fade.
It only learns to breathe quietly.
He sat down at the piano and pressed a single key. The note was soft, trembling. Then another. And another.
The melody came back like an old wound the same tune he wrote for her the night she first fell asleep beside him, her hand resting on his chest, her heartbeat syncing with the rhythm of his song.
He played it again now, alone.
Each note echoed through the empty apartment, bending beneath the sound of thunder.
When he reached the last chord, his phone lit up.
A message.
From Elara.
"The sea is red tonight. I thought of you."
Just that. Nothing else.
Adrian's throat tightened. He wanted to reply to say don't go, stay, I still believe in us. But his fingers hovered above the screen, useless.
He knew what his silence had already cost them.
Instead, he typed slowly
"The horizon always turns red before the dawn. Maybe that's our curse."
He didn't send it. He couldn't.
The cursor blinked like a heartbeat that refused to stop, and then the message disappeared into drafts unsent,
like everything else between them.
He rose from the piano, pacing the room, hands trembling. The memories were too vivid now the smell of her hair, the warmth of her laugh, the way she used to look at him as if the entire world existed only for that one glance.
He couldn't let her go again.
Not this time.
He went to his studio and turned on the light.
Canvases covered every wall, sketches stacked high on the table. Each one was a fragment of her her eyes, her smile, her grief. But there was one he never finished, hidden beneath a cloth.
He pulled it free.
It was the painting he started after her first exhibition the one where she stood beneath the red horizon, the sea glowing like blood beneath the setting sun.
Adrian stared at it, his voice breaking softly.
"Maybe it was never the sea that burned," he whispered. "Maybe it was us."
He reached for the brush. The paint on the palette had long since dried, but he found a new color crimson, darker than the rest and began to fill in the unfinished sky.
Stroke after stroke, he painted as if each breath depended on it. The sound of the storm outside faded beneath the rhythm of his heartbeat.
By the time the rain stopped, the painting was complete.
And at the bottom, beneath the waves of red and light, he signed it quietly:
For Elara Monroe. The one who still breathes in color.
The dawn came pale through the curtains.
Adrian stood back, eyes tired, chest hollow, but something in the air felt different heavier, yes, but real.
He finally whispered, "Florence, then."
As the first sunlight touched the edges of the city, Adrian packed his things brushes, sketches, the unfinished letter. He didn't know what he'd say when he saw her again. He didn't even know if she'd listen.
But he knew he had to try.
He locked the door behind him, leaving the apartment in silence.
On the piano, the unsent message still glowed faintly
"The horizon always turns red before the dawn."
Then the phone screen dimmed.
Darkness swallowed the light.
And the city began to wake.