Alya closed the door and left.
She stood still for a moment on the pavement, the faint morning light still tinting everything in soft shades of blue and grey. The air was cold, sharp, making her pull her jacket tighter around herself. She looked back one last time — at the house, at the closed door, at something she couldn't name but that made her chest tighten in a strange and painful way.
Then she turned and began to walk, her footsteps echoing softly on the still-deserted street, leaving behind answers she would never find and questions she would never be able to fully form.
The city still slept around her as she disappeared around the corner, carrying with her inexplicable tears and a pain without a name.
---
Through the invisible veil that separated one reality from another, in an abandoned building that mirrored that same morning in different tones, Yunar slowly rose from the floor, leaving the fragments behind on the floor of Eren's room.
His legs trembled slightly — he didn't know how long he had been kneeling there, his muscles stiff and protesting against every movement. The fragments lay scattered around his feet, now nothing but pieces of grey and lifeless crystal, like shards of frosted glass that had lost all their glow. Pieces of a broken fate that could never be reassembled, no matter how much he wished for it.
He looked at them one last time — those objects that had caused so much suffering, that had torn through realities and separated loves. Now they were just dead stones, incapable of causing more damage, incapable of healing what had been done.
He didn't touch them again. He simply left them there, abandoned on the dusty floor of the apartment that had long since ceased to be inhabited.
He walked to the door with heavy steps, each one demanding a conscious effort. When his fingers touched the cold handle, he hesitated for just a second — one last look back, at the room where everything had ended and begun simultaneously.
Then he opened the door.
Stepped out.
Closed it behind him.
The sound of the latch clicking into place echoed through the empty corridor of the abandoned building, reverberating against peeling walls and cracked floors that had not heard human voices for a long time. The corridor was drowned in half-darkness, lit only by the faint light coming through a dirty window at the far end.
Silence.
An absolute and heavy silence descended over everything — over the apartment, over the forgotten fragments, over the end of something that perhaps should never have begun.
And then, only the passing of time.
Days turned into weeks with the inevitability of water flowing. Weeks accumulated into months. The world kept turning on its axis, completely indifferent to the personal tragedies occurring on its surface. Seasons changed — the cold gave way to warmth, leaves fell and sprouted again in eternal cycles. Life followed its inexorable course, as it always had, as it always would.
---
Nine months passed.
---
The sound of the waves arrived before the sea could even be seen.
The water struck the shore with force.
Waves broke in explosions of white foam, their rhythmic and eternal sound filling the air alongside the intense smell of sea salt and seaweed carried by the constant breeze. The sun was high in a cloudless blue sky, its light reflected on the undulating surface of the ocean in thousands of brilliant points that hurt the eyes of anyone who looked directly. The summer heat made the air shimmer slightly above the golden sand.
Yunar was standing there on the wet sand, right where the waves died in their final surge against the land, holding little Hana by the arms.
She had grown in those nine months — taller, more talkative, more full of life and energy. Her dark hair swayed in the salty wind as she watched the waves with that childlike fascination that saw magic in every movement of nature.
Sara was at his side, a light white summer dress floating softly in the sea breeze. Her face was relaxed, happy, eyes shielded by sunglasses as she watched her daughter with that maternal love that needed no words.
The beach was full of life on that sunny Saturday. People spread across the golden expanse of sand — whole families with their colourful parasols creating vibrant splashes of red, blue and yellow; children running and shouting with joy as they chased the retreating waves; couples walking hand in hand along the shore; groups of teenagers playing volleyball and football; the sound of laughter and conversation mixing with the constant roar of the sea.
It was a perfect summer scene. The kind of moment that should be kept in yellowed photographs and remembered with warm nostalgia years later.
Hana pulled his arm with force, her eyes shining with pure and unfiltered excitement.
"Daddy, I want to build houses in the sand! Will you help me?"
Sara laughed — that light and musical laugh that Yunar vaguely remembered having loved when they first met, in a time that seemed to belong to another life, to another person.
"Of course your father will help you. And I'm going to help too. Aren't we, love?"
She looked at Yunar, waiting for confirmation, waiting for him to share in that simple and perfect moment of family happiness.
But Yunar's mind was completely elsewhere, thinking of a certain someone.
Always thinking. Always remembering. Trapped in memories that only he carried, in a love that only he still knew, in an entire life that had been erased from all minds except his own. It was a weight he carried alone, invisible but crushing, present in every waking moment and in every dream.
In that instant, tears fell involuntarily.
Warm. Silent. Tracing those familiar paths down his cheeks that already knew the route by heart, like rivers following ancestral riverbeds.
Sara noticed immediately, as she always did. Her expression shifted from joy to genuine concern in a second.
"Love, are you okay? If you're not feeling well, we can go home."
Yunar blinked, returning to the present with effort, as though being pulled up from underwater. He quickly dried his face with the back of his hand, trying to conceal what could not be concealed.
"It's nothing. A bit of grit got in my eye."
The lie came out too easily now, polished by months of repetition. The excuse that everyone accepted because it was simpler than an impossible truth.
He looked down at Hana, who was still looking up at him with that expectant expression, full of innocent hope and unconditional love.
He looked at his daughter and said, forcing a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes:
"Shall we start?"
"Yay!" His daughter cried, jumping with joy before running toward an empty area of the beach where the sand was perfect for building.
The word echoed across the stretch of beach, mixing with the laughter of other children, with the constant roar of the waves, with the distant call of seagulls circling in the blue sky.
Sara smiled and began to follow their daughter, carrying the beach toys — colourful buckets, plastic spades, moulds in the shape of stars and castles.
Yunar stood still for one more moment, looking at the infinite horizon where the sky met the sea in a perfectly straight line. Then he breathed deeply — the salty air filling his lungs — and followed them, carrying with him an invisible weight that he could never share.
---
But in a different reality, under a sun that burned with a different intensity, another story was unfolding.
The sun beat down on the streets with an almost cruel intensity.
The pavement radiated visible heat waves, making the air shimmer and distort everything in ghostly undulations. Few people ventured out onto the pavements at that hour — most preferring the safety of air-conditioned spaces until the worst of the heat passed.
Right at the door of the house where Yunar had once lived under the roof of the white-haired woman — though nobody remembered this anymore, though reality itself had been rewritten to erase his existence — Alya was standing there.
She was holding a floral umbrella to shield herself from the scorching sun, the shadow it cast offering only minimal relief from the oppressive heat rising from the concrete. And in her arms, wrapped in a light cotton blanket despite the heat, a newborn baby.
Tiny. Fragile. Eyes still closed most of the time, small hands clenched in little fists, the soft and steady breathing of someone who had just arrived in the world without understanding their own impossibility.
A baby who shouldn't exist. A baby who was living proof that some things transcend even the deletion of reality.
Alya looked at the baby for a long moment, as though still trying to process the reality of their existence. Nine months of confusion, of a body changing in ways she didn't understand, of questions without answers and tears without explanation.
And now there was the proof. Real. Undeniable. Impossible to ignore.
She breathed deeply, gathering all the courage she possessed.
She pressed the doorbell.
The sound echoed from the other side — sharp, insistent. Footsteps approached, slow and cautious.
The door opened.
The white-haired woman appeared, wearing a floral apron over a simple dress. When her eyes found Alya, they widened immediately in recognition — vague, confused, but undeniable.
"You're the girl who was mysteriously in my house, aren't you?"
Her voice carried a mixture of surprise and confusion, as though she were trying to assemble a puzzle with pieces that refused to fit together properly.
But Alya remained standing, looking at her.
She said nothing immediately. She just stood there in the doorway, the baby in her arms, the umbrella casting soft shadows over both of them.
Droplets of tears were visible in her eyes, gathering at the edges, trembling on the surface before finally falling.
Then she spoke, her voice coming out from behind the tears, trembling but determined:
"Yunar... your..."
She stopped.
Swallowed hard.
Tried again.
And in that same instant — not in the physical world where two women faced each other under the relentless sun, but in a place above it, beyond it, through all the layers of reality — a voice echoed from beyond.
Not a voice that could be heard with ears. But it was there, echoing like the narrative voice of a purpose within a certain story, like the whisper of destiny itself weaving invisible threads through time and space.
The voice of the man who had died on the mountain echoed from beyond, carrying truths that transcended explanation.
*[You cannot...]*
In that instant, Alya looked at the woman and continued her words, tears now falling freely.
"Your son, Yunar... he..."
A pause.
The baby stirred slightly in her arms, a small sigh escaping from tiny lips.
The voice from beyond continued, filling the space between the words with an eternal truth:
*[You cannot escape love.]*
Alya continued, her voice gaining strength despite the tears that wouldn't stop.
"He is..."
A pause.
She breathed deeply, the air entering in broken sobs.
The voice from beyond continued, relentless in its truth:
*[The only way is...]*
Alya looked into the woman's eyes — those confused but gentle eyes, those eyes that almost remembered having had a son but couldn't complete the memory, as though there were an invisible wall blocking the path.
"Yunar is..."
A pause.
The world seemed to have stopped around them, the heat, the distant noise of the city, everything disappearing until only this moment remained, suspended in time.
The voice from beyond continued:
*[The only way is...]*
Then Alya finished her sentence, each word costing an immense effort, each syllable carrying a weight that went beyond the comprehensible:
"He is... the father... of my... child."
The voice from beyond resumed, echoing through all realities, through all time, through all space, completing the truth that had always been inevitable:
*[The only way is... to remain... connected.]*
The silence that followed was absolute.
The woman's eyes went wide, her mouth slightly open, trying to process words that defied all logic but that carried the undeniable weight of truth.
Alya remained there, holding the baby — the physical proof that love had transcended the very deletion of reality, that some bonds cannot be severed even when all memories are erased, even when existence itself is rewritten.
And somewhere, in another timeline, Yunar built sandcastles with his daughter while involuntary tears fell, carrying memories of a love that only he still possessed.
Two realities.
Two loves.
Two bonds that could not be undone.
Only divided.
But remaining connected through the impossible, through time, through
the very fabric of existence.
Because in the end, no matter how many realities you separate, no matter how many memories you erase.
The bonds remain.
They always remain.
Inevitable.
---
*THE END*
*Inevitable Ties*