Chapter 51: Return gift
Arthur could barely sleep last night.
His mind kept circling back to the conversation with Grace—the way she looked, the words she said. They wouldn’t let him rest. Even now, her voice echoed in his head like a quiet storm he couldn’t escape.
He kept thinking about what she told him... and the history he had read so many times about Grace Rahna Williams and Eric Dawnhec. Every book, every record, said the same thing—they ended up together. They lived a peaceful life after everything. And Arthur had no problem with that.
She hadn’t betrayed him. He was the one who left her behind long ago. Their engagement was annulled a year before his death. If she moved on and found happiness with the man who had stood by her side during the worst days, then that was only fair. That was what he believed. That was what helped him sleep—until now.
But last night... everything changed.
Someone who looked exactly like Grace, who spoke like her, who seemed to carry her very soul, had told him something that shook him to the core.
She said Grace died a year later.
In grief. In regret.
Why? How? It didn’t make sense. She was supposed to be happy. She was supposed to move on. She could never have known the truth about Clarsen. She never should have known that his reason for doing what he did... was to defeat the enemy that threatened all of humanity.
Arthur sat still for a long moment, staring at nothing, the weight of it all pressing on his chest.
"This can’t be true..." he whispered.