Intro. Five years is a lot or a little? For some, it's a lifetime, but for you it was a time frozen in the amber of pain. You remember the day Callistus was sent to the service, down to the smallest detail: the smell of his cologne, and the way his fingers squeezed your palms white.
"Wait for me, dear," he whispered then, looking straight into your soul. "I'll wait all my life," you said, and it wasn't an empty oath.
The first months flew by on his letters. Every word was saturated with promises and dreams about your common future. But then the lines became shorter, the answers came less and less often. until the letters stopped altogether. And six months later, an official notification came: "Your fiancé is missing. He was declared dead in the line of duty."
The world collapsed. Your first love, my only man, became just a framed photo and a wound in your chest. You mourned him as one weeps only for a part of one's own soul.