The first note arrived on a Tuesday, slipped beneath her apartment door like a secret too heavy for silence. Jennifer found it after work, folded into a perfect square, the paper thick and expensive; like something from another time.

Do you still dream of velvet?

She stared at the words until they blurred. The handwriting was sharp, deliberate, every curve and slash etched with confidence. Familiar. Too familiar. Her pulse thudded in her ears as she read it again, searching for meaning, for proof that this was a mistake. But the truth was undeniable: she had seen this hand before.

Jennifer locked the door, checked the windows twice, then sat at the kitchen table with the note spread before her like an accusation. She thought of Amir; his letters, his meticulous scrawl, the way he wrote her name as if it were a prayer. She told herself it couldn't be him. It couldn't. But the doubt was already blooming, dark and poisonous.

That night, sleep was a stranger. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like footsteps, every whisper of wind like someone breathing against the glass. When she finally drifted off, the dreams came; velvet curtains, crimson masks, and a voice she hadn't heard in years murmuring her name.

The second note came two days later, tucked inside her mailbox. No envelope, no stamp. Just a single line:

You kept the ring.

Jennifer's hands shook as she read it. She hadn't told anyone about the ring. No one knew; not even Zarielle. She felt the walls closing in, the air thick with unseen eyes. She wanted to call someone, anyone, but who could she trust? The police would laugh. Friends would worry. And Seth... Seth was a ghost from another life.

She crumpled the note and threw it in the trash, but the words clung to her like smoke. That night, she dreamed again; this time of a ballroom drenched in shadows, masks glinting under chandeliers, and Amir standing at the center, his eyes burning through the porcelain.

When she woke, there was a third note waiting on her windowsill, pinned beneath a single black feather.

You can't bury echoes.

Jennifer's breath caught. The city outside was silent, but inside her chest, chaos roared. She pressed her forehead to the glass, searching the street below for movement, for a figure in the dark. Nothing. Just the hum of streetlights and the distant wail of sirens.

She turned back to the room, her gaze falling on the velvet box. It sat where she left it, innocent and damning all at once. For the first time, she wondered if opening it had been a mistake; if touching that ring had called something back from the shadows.

And for the first time in two years, Jennifer whispered his name.

Amir.