“Don’t you want to be here when your son is born?”
Everything stopped.The forest.The air.Me.
I turned.The light was there now.Not blinding or harsh.Just… present.
A path I hadn’t noticed before stretched out ahead of me, glowing faintly, pulling me forward with a quiet kind of certainty.
But behind me, that voice stretched, suspending time.
Antonella.
Her voice cut through everything.
I turned back.And for a moment, I saw her.Not clearly.It was just a glimpse.But she was standing there, watching me.Her face was streaked with tears.The sound of her breaking gutted me.
And the words…‘your son’.
My chest tightened.Confusion flickered through me.A son.Mine.Ours.The thought landed heavy, strange, impossible.
I took a step back toward her.Toward her voice and the life I didn’t know I had waiting for me.
Rasputin didn’t stop me.He just watched.Because this part was mine.
The pull behind me was strong.Pain.Weight.A life unfinished.
But the light, it called differently.Not with urgency, but with peace.
And I realized—I already knew.If I went back, it wouldn’t be enough.It wouldn’t be this.It would be pain.Blood.Fighting for something I might not ever win.
And Tone - she’d carry it anyway.She’d survive it.
My chest ached, but it wasn’t pain I felt.It was a sense of loss.Finality.
I looked back one last time.At the shape of her.At the life I didn’t get to live.At the future that existed without me in it.
“I had you,” I murmured.
It was enough.It had to be.Because even in the shortest time, she gave me something I didn’t know I could have.Something that wasn’t built on violence or survival.Something real.And I carried that with me.Wherever this went.
I turned.Faced the light.And this time—I didn’t hesitate.
I walked.Slow at first.Then steady.Each step lighter than the last, like the weight I carried my whole life was slipping away piece by piece.
Behind me, the world faded.The noise.The pain.The voices.But not her.She stayed with me.Not as grief or regret.As something else entirely.My permanent, mine for all time.She didn’t end here.Because I knew, with a certainty that settled deep in my bones, that this wasn’t the last time we would meet.Not for us.
One day—somewhere—we’d find each other again.And then, we wouldn’t be torn apart.
The light stretched out ahead of me, endless and warm.And I walked into it.Finally, at peace.
35
Tone
Hands were on me.I didn’t register them at first—just pressure, movement, something dragging me backward while my entire body fought to stay where I was.But they didn’t feel like Archie’s hands.
“No—!”
My fingers clawed at Archie’s shirt, slipping on blood, refusing to let go.