At his granddaughter’s funeral, suspecting something was wrong, the old man approached the coffin and opened the lid. What he saw made his blood ran cold…
In the small village where everyone knew each other, the funeral of little Alina, the beloved granddaughter of Stefan, had brought all the villagers together. But amidst this sorrow, the old grandfather and his faithful dog Milo felt something strange—something unexplainable.
Milo suddenly began barking and lunging toward the coffin. Stefan didn’t pay much attention at first, but the dog’s distress soon transferred to him.
What he saw made his hair stand on end. His eyes widened in horror…
Alina, his seven-year-old granddaughter, was breathing. Her eyelids fluttered, and tiny beads of sweat appeared on her cold forehead. She wasn’t dead.
“She’s alive!” shouted Stefan, his voice hoarse with emotion. “Alina is alive!”
The village doctor, Matei, pushed his way through and bent down over the little girl. With trembling hands, he checked her pulse.
“Catalepsy,” he whispered, pale. “A state of apparent death. God help me, I signed the death certificate myself…”
Chaos broke out. Someone called an ambulance, others brought water, while old Stefan held Alina tightly, as if she might vanish again.
At the county hospital, the doctors confirmed the diagnosis: a rare form of catalepsy, triggered by a viral infection that had slowed all vital functions to an almost undetectable level.
In the days that followed, the village was shaken by the revelation. Old Stefan became a local hero, and Milo was given meat treats from every household.
One evening, two weeks after the miracle, with Alina already home and recovering, Stefan sat on the porch of his house. Milo suddenly ran to the gate, barking cheerfully.
An old man with white hair and a carved cane stepped into the yard. It was Vasile, the sorcerer from the neighboring village, rumored to see beyond the veil of this world.
“I felt I needed to come,” Vasile said, sitting beside Stefan. “To tell you what you already know in your heart.”
The old sorcerer explained to Stefan that some people — and animals — can sense the shadows of death… or the absence of them. Milo had felt that Alina’s soul had not yet left her body, unlike in true death.
“You and your dog share the same gift,” Vasile added. “That’s why you could hear what others could not.”
That night, while Alina slept peacefully in her room, Stefan lay awake, thinking about the wizard’s words. He suddenly remembered other moments in his life when he had felt inexplicable things — like when he knew the exact moment his wife had died, even though he was miles away.
In the months that followed, Alina’s miraculous story spread throughout the region. People came from afar to see “the girl who returned from the dead” and the dog who had saved her.
One morning, as Alina played in the garden with Milo, she asked her grandfather:
“Grandpa, what did you see when you opened the coffin? Why did the hair on your arms stand up?”
Stefan looked at her for a long moment, then smiled.
“I saw your future, my little one. And it was far too beautiful to let it disappear.”