Chapter 1: The Blooms Remains

Prologue:

The war had long passed, but the ground still whispered its secrets.

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‎Scarlet petals swayed like bloodied flags in the wind, each bloom a silent elegy to those who had vanished beneath the soil. She walked alone through the field, her fingers brushing the poppies as if they were names carved in stone—each one a story, each one a sacrifice.

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‎And then, as if called by memory itself, she danced.

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‎Not for joy, but for remembrance.

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‎Barefoot on broken earth, she moved with the grace of mourning. Every step echoed the past: the fire, the screams, the promises made in shadowed corners. Her dress caught the wind like a torn flag, her arms outstretched toward a ghost no longer there.

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‎They had called him many things:

traitor,

savior,

soldier.

But to her, he had only ever been Elias.

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‎She danced in the poppies so that no one would forget.

‎Not the war. Not the love.

‎And not the lie that shattered them both.

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Chapter One: The Bloom Remains

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‎The train hissed to a stop, exhaling steam like a tired beast. Isa stepped onto the weathered platform with a soft thud, the weight of her satchel pulling on her shoulder, though it was her heart that felt heavier.

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‎The village hadn’t changed.

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‎Same crooked houses hugging the hills. Same cobbled road leading to nowhere in particular. And beyond it all, just as she remembered, the wide-open stretch of land where the poppies grew wild and red, like a wound the earth could never quite heal.

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‎She stood there for a long moment, letting the wind kiss her cheeks. The scent was familiar—dirt, dew, and faint echoes of smoke.

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‎He died here.

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‎That was what they told her.

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‎Isa walked the dirt path in silence, her boots leaving faint impressions beside the stubborn weeds. Children used to play here before the bombs fell. Now the land was still. Reverent.

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‎She reached the edge of the field just as the sun dipped lower, spilling gold over red. The poppies bent with the breeze, dancing gently as though bowing to a long-lost song.

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‎She let her fingers graze the petals. Velvet. Fragile.

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‎Just like he said they would be.

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‎"Red is the color of memory," Elias had whispered once, lying beside her in a field just like this, gun slung across his chest and eyes on the sky. "And poppies never forget."

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‎She hadn’t believed him then. She wasn’t sure she believed him now. But she kept coming back—every year, on this day, when the wind blew a certain way and her dreams dragged her here.

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‎Isa stepped into the field.

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‎She didn’t cry. Not anymore. Her grief had aged into something quieter, something colder. But she moved through the flowers as if remembering how to breathe, how to feel, how to live in a moment she had buried.

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‎And then she danced.

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‎Arms wide. Feet light. The sun setting fire to her silhouette. Not for an audience. Not for peace. For him.

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‎So that the poppies would remember.

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‎So that the world would not forget.

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‎She spun once, twice—then stopped, breathless.

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‎The silence greeted her like an old friend. Isa closed her eyes and let the wind carry her backward, to the day she met the man no one else remembered kindly.

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‎Three Years Earlier

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‎The field hadn’t yet turned red. It was still early spring, and the earth was brown, damp, and unwelcoming. Isa had wandered off her assigned route, following the sound of something strange—like a whistle caught in the wind.

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‎And then he spoke behind her.

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‎“You’re off the path, nurse.”

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‎She turned, startled. He stood beneath the bare branches of a twisted tree, uniform faded but eyes sharp. Too clean for a grunt, too quiet for an officer. The scar across his left brow told one story. The quiet in his hands told another.

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‎“Didn’t mean to trespass,” Isa said, clutching her bag. “I was just…”

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‎“Following ghosts,” he finished.

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‎She blinked.

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‎“I’ve seen that look before.” He stepped closer, boots silent on the soft ground. “Like you’re hoping the dead will say something new if you come back often enough.”

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‎“You know this area well?” she asked, shifting her weight.

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‎“I know where the land mines used to be,” he said dryly. “That’s why you should come back.”

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‎She squinted. “And who are you to tell me where to walk?”

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‎He hesitated. Then—a smile. Brief. Crooked.

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‎“No one. Just another ghost.”

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‎Later, she would learn his name was Elias Dvorák. A liaison officer. A scout. A translator. A spy, depending on who was talking.

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‎But in that moment, he was a man who smelled faintly of ash and pine, who spoke like he was carrying something heavy in his chest, and who walked her back to safety without saying another word.

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‎She didn’t know it yet, but that would be the first of many walks.

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‎And the start of the slow, impossible blooming between two people already buried in war.

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