??He never believed in ghosts until the night her hand slipped from his.

?She had fallen, not from a building, not from a cliff, but from time itself.

Every evening he returned to the same place. Not physically, since it had long been torn down, but in his mind, in that chamber where memory and regret mingled like smoke.

Her name was Shaali . She had loved like wildfire, bold, consuming, and radiant. He was her opposite, made of stone and silence, born from a world where emotion was seen as weakness and dreams were treated as distractions. Yet, she saw through his muscles, through his scowl, and into the aching boy beneath.

?They danced once, with no music. Rain fell like applause. She said, "Promise me, if I ever disappear, you will remember me not for how I left, but for how I lived."

?Then the illness came. It was quick and unforgiving, like a curtain closing with no encore. He watched the life fade from her like dusk swallowing light. His arms held her, but not tightly enough. She slipped away, smiling, as if the pain was lighter than the weight of life.

?But that was not the end.

?Because on some nights, just like this one, in the corner of his sleep, he stands again at that edge. And there she is, emerging from the mist and from the silence, her body floating like breath, her face glowing with that eternal calm.

?She falls. Every time.

?And every time, he reaches.

?Not to catch her,

?But to remember her fall,

?Not as tragedy,

But as flight.

?In the waking world, his fingers twitch. A tear escapes. And he whispers her name, not as a question, but as a vow.

?Shaali never truly left. She simply became the part of him that still reaches.

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?By Azhar Azad