Chapter 28

She walked the district alone the night before they left. Kai had offered his coat and his shadow, but she had said no; she needed one hour to look at the ruins of her childhood before she buried them for good.

It was late spring. The air was cold, smelling of the salt from the Veridian Sea and the wet grease of the iron foundries along the canal. Oakhaven was quiet at midnight, its streets empty of everything but the low hum of distant power stations.

She walked down the gravel road where she used to ride her rusted bicycle to the local school. She stopped in front of the shuttered, dark storefront of Marceau Tech Electronics. A heavy, rusted padlock hung from the door handles, and the blue liquidation notice—bearing her father’s name in that tiny, sterile font used by court baliffs—was peeling away under a year of rain and sea fog.

She pressed her palm against the cold glass of the display window. Inside, the workbenches where her father had taught her how to solder her first microchip were empty, covered in a thick layer of gray dust. The shop looked so small now. She couldn't tell if the building had shrunk or if she had simply grown into something too large to fit inside these narrow streets anymore.

She kept walking, past the old community center, past the black water of the canal junction where she had sat at twelve years old, reading advanced software architecture manuals because she didn't know how to talk to the children who played tag on the grass.

She ended up at the old stone pier at the edge of the harbor. The Veridian Sea was flat tonight, reflecting the brilliant, blinding lights of the Upper Cliffs three kilometers away. High above the slums, gleaming like a crown of white glass and steel, sat Aethelgard—Alistair Thorne’s personal fortress. The penthouse windows were lit, a cold, diamond brightness that never dimmed, even at three in the morning.

Evelyn stood at the edge of the salt-slick timber, the wind whipping her dark hair across her face. She looked up at his light. She expected to feel that old, paralyzing terror—the memory of the blood on his white carpet, the weight of his hand forcing her to sign her life away.

Instead, she felt nothing but a deep, unshakeable stillness.

"I'll be back, Alistair," she whispered into the wind, her voice clear and hard as slate. "But the next time I walk into your building, I won't be the girl from the basement asking for a course correction. I’m bringing the storm with me."

The sea didn't answer. The sea never did. It always stayed calm like nothing ever bothered it.

She turned her back on the cliff lights, walked back to the cellar, and slept for four perfect, dreamless hours. In the morning, they packed their lives into two nylon bags and a four-seater pram, stepping out into the gray Solaria dawn without looking back once.