Elara's POV
The scream tears me from sleep at 11:47 PM.
I sit up in bed, heart pounding. Through the thin walls of my tiny apartment, I hear Mrs. Chen's voice—sharp, furious, breaking with rage.
Then comes the heavy thud of something falling.
My hands are already shaking as I reach for my journal on the nightstand. The leather is worn soft from five years of desperate use. I light my single candle with trembling fingers and flip to today's date.
11:47 PM, I write. Mrs. Chen discovers the affair. Again.
Downstairs in the bakery, Mr. Chen is about to die. His wife found out he's been sneaking off to see the seamstress three doors down. She's grabbing the iron skillet right now, her face twisted with betrayal and rage.
I've watched this exact moment twelve times before.
In thirteen minutes, none of it will matter.
At midnight, the moon will reset time back to 11:00 PM. Mr. Chen will be alive again, pulling bread from his oven. Mrs. Chen will be upstairs reading, with no memory of what she's about to do. The blood on their kitchen floor will vanish like it never existed.
And everyone will forget.
Everyone except me.
I press my palms against my closed eyes, but I can still see it—Mrs. Chen's face, the skillet rising and falling, the dark pool spreading across the floor. The image burns into my mind like all the others, permanent and inescapable.
Five years of this curse.
Five years of being the only person in the entire kingdom who remembers what happens during the reset hour.
My stomach churns. I stumble to my cracked washbasin and splash cold water on my face. The girl staring back from the broken mirror looks like a stranger—hollow eyes, tangled dark hair, skin too pale. I used to be someone. Used to matter.
Now I'm just the crazy girl who lives in a storage room above the library.
This apartment used to hold forgotten furniture. Now it holds me—one sagging bed, a table barely big enough for my journals, a single chair, and shelves crammed with five years of documentation that proves I'm not insane.
Even though everyone thinks I am.
I was engaged once. To Victor Ashwood, a nobleman with a charming smile and ambitious eyes. I lived in my family's mansion with servants and silk dresses and a future that sparkled like starlight.
Then the curse struck.
The first reset happened on my twenty-second birthday. Suddenly, I could remember the hour between 11:00 PM and midnight—an hour that rewound and erased itself for everyone else. I watched my fiancé and my own sister Selene stealing documents from the royal treasury during that hour. When I confronted them the next morning, they looked at me like I'd lost my mind.
Because they had no memory of it.
I tried to explain. Tried to make them understand. But the more I insisted, the crazier I sounded.
Within a month, my family declared me mentally unstable. Victor broke our engagement publicly, claiming he couldn't marry someone so disturbed. Then he married Selene instead—my younger sister who'd always been jealous of my position.
They stripped me of my inheritance, my title, my place in society. My own father—the former Head Archivist—got me this job shelving books in the library's basement, just to keep me out of sight.
"For your own good," he said, unable to meet my eyes.
I haven't spoken to my family in four years.
I check my pocket watch. 11:54 PM.
Six minutes until the reset.
Downstairs, Mrs. Chen is probably panicking now, staring at what she's done. But she doesn't need to panic. In six minutes, her husband will be alive. She'll have no memory of killing him. And next month, during the next full moon, I'll watch the exact same murder happen again.
This is my life. Watching crimes that never officially happen. Carrying memories nobody else believes exist. Being completely, utterly alone.
My chest tightens with the familiar weight of isolation.
Sometimes I wonder what would hurt less—continuing to live like this, or just giving up entirely.
But I can't give up. Not anymore.
Because I have a secret. One that keeps me surviving when everything else says to quit.
Four years ago, during a reset night when I was drowning in loneliness, I met someone. A stranger in the shadows near the lunar temple. He looked at me—really looked at me—like I was actually visible. Like I mattered.
For one impossible hour, I wasn't alone.
We didn't exchange names. Didn't make promises. We just held onto each other like two people drowning who'd found something solid to grip.
When I woke the next morning, he was gone. I've never seen him again.
But nine months later, I had Iris.
My daughter. My secret. My reason for surviving.
She's four years old now, hidden in the Forgotten Quarter with a woman I trust. I visit her whenever I can sneak away from work. And Iris—my sweet, impossible girl—inherited the curse.
She remembers the resets too.
At four years old, she carries the weight of memories that would break most adults. I watch her struggling under it, and my heart shatters a little more each day.
But I protect her. Hide her. Keep her safe from a world that would call her crazy just like they call me crazy.
She's all I have. And I'm all she has.
11:58 PM.
Two minutes.
I grip my journal and wait for the familiar sensation—like cold hands wrapping around my spine, dragging me backward through time.
The pull comes at exactly midnight.
Reality shivers. The candle flame freezes mid-flicker. My breath catches in my lungs.
Then time rewinds.
I feel it sliding backward, undoing the last hour. Somewhere below me, Mr. Chen's body disappears. The blood vanishes. Mrs. Chen forgets the rage and betrayal burning in her chest.
When the world settles again, my pocket watch reads 11:00 PM.
One hour has been erased.
For everyone but me.
I write quickly in my journal: Reset complete. Murder erased. Mrs. Chen will kill him again next month. Nothing changes. Nothing ever changes.
My hand is still moving across the page when exhaustion crashes over me like a wave.
Five years of this. Five years of documenting crimes that vanish. Five years of being invisible.
I blow out my candle and crawl back into bed, pulling my threadbare blanket up to my chin.
Tomorrow, I'll go to work in the library's basement. I'll organize books nobody reads. I'll endure the whispers from other workers who think I'm broken.
I'll sneak away during lunch to hold my daughter and pretend everything will be okay.
And in thirty days, when the next full moon rises, I'll watch Mrs. Chen kill her husband again.
Because this is my curse.
This is my life.
Alone with memories that nobody else carries.
I close my eyes and wait for sleep that probably won't come.
Somewhere in the city, the moon watches. Cold. Silent. Unchanging.
Just like me.