Seven months passed since the world had gone quiet.
By now, the streets were filled again with people hurrying to rebuild what had been lost.
Clara often sat with Lily and her parents during dinner, watching the news play softly on the television. The stories were different now — not about sickness, but about struggle.
Factories closing.
Shops gone forever.
Families losing everything they had built.
Lily sighed one evening, resting her chin on the table. "It feels like the whole world is trying to start over."
Clara looked at her gently. "Maybe… that's how life always is," she said softly. "It breaks, and then begins again."
---
Time moved quietly toward another year.
And by 2024, the news changed once more.
The headlines finally brought a strange kind of relief:
> "Global COVID-19 Cases Drop Dramatically — Hope Returns Worldwide."
The world was breathing again.
Markets reopened. Children played outside. People smiled behind unneeded masks, grateful just to see each other's faces again.
It felt like the world had been given a second chance.
But that peace didn't last long.
---
One night in late autumn, Lily's father switched channels, stopping when the news anchor's tone shifted.
> "In other news — a rare discovery has stunned historians and mystery enthusiasts alike.
A recently recovered dashcam footage from 2024, found in an old data archive, shows the car belonging to missing artist Jacob Moreau, who vanished mysteriously."
Clara froze.
Her hands, resting on the teacup, went completely still.
The screen showed grainy footage of a dark road, a small car driving through rain. Headlights flared, followed by a sudden, blinding collision with a truck.
Then—nothing.
The car didn't burn. It didn't flip.
It simply… vanished.
> "Authorities at the time reported no trace of the vehicle or its passenger was ever found," the anchor continued. "But experts now claim the footage has not been altered in any way. The car simply disappears — as if erased from existence."
---
Clara couldn't breathe.
She knew that moment.
She remembered it — the shattering sound, the flash of light, and the crushing silence that followed.
Her heart — or whatever replaced it — felt cold.
It was the same night she had died.
The same night her spirit had been pulled from that broken world and cast into another century.
---
Lily noticed her expression.
"Clara? Are you okay?"
Clara blinked, forcing a faint smile. "Yes… I just… thought the story was strange, that's all."
But inside, her thoughts trembled like glass.
Jacob Moreau.
The name that once belonged to her.
The world had finally remembered him — but not as a person, only as a mystery.
---
Later that night, long after everyone had gone to bed, Clara sat by the window again.
Rain fell softly against the glass, just like that night so long ago.
She closed her eyes, and for a moment, it felt as though the years folded in on themselves — 2024, 1901, 1889, all blurring into one.
She whispered into the dark:
> "So it really happened…
I didn't imagine it."
Outside, lightning flickered faintly across the clouds.
For the first time in more than a century, Clara felt her two lives — Jacob and Clara — touch.
And she wondered if, perhaps, the universe had meant for her to see this…
as a reminder that no soul ever truly vanishes.
It only changes shape.