PROLOGUE

BEFORE THE FIRST DREAM

She doesn't remember asking to forget. But someone paid the price.

Somewhere between sleep and surrender, the Gallery opened.

He hadn’t dreamed of her in centuries.

Not since the last time she forgot.

She locked it away, he realized.

The memory.

The knowing.

The way he touched her like no one else ever had.

She didn’t just forget him.

She chose to.

Buried it like some lockbox behind her ribs

sealed with logic, therapy, and just enough pain

to convince herself it wasn’t real.

But the body never lies.

And the Gallery always remembers.

That first night, he almost didn’t touch her.

Almost let her drift back to the waking world untouched -

just to see if she’d come again.

But then she moaned his name like she didn’t remember him…

and somehow still knew.

That’s when he realized...

She didn’t want to remember.

That’s why the Gallery found her.

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