The door sealed behind him with a sound that barely registered.Soft. Controlled. Final.Eli stood still for half a second longer than necessary, then turned and walked down the corridor without looking back. The walls were smooth, unmarked, the lighting deliberately even. No cameras he could see. That didn’t mean there weren’t any.The people who’d brought him here waited at the end of the hall.Three of them.The same ones.They hadn’t spoken once since the doors opened.No identifiers. No visible earpieces. No weapons on display. They stood with the relaxed posture of people who knew they didn’t need to explain themselves to anyone in this building.Eli slowed as he approached, his gaze moving over them more deliberately now.Were they just drivers?Security contracted for the day?Or something closer?Personal to the Concord members, maybe. Handpicked. Loyal to individuals, not institutions.Or worse — chosen precisely because they weren’t loyal to anyone at all.One of the men in

Eli didn’t go home after leaving Selene’s house.He drove for a while with no destination, letting the night thin out around him. Streetlights blurred into long stretches of amber and shadow, the city loosening its grip the farther he went. At some point he pulled over near the river, killed the engine, and sat there with the window cracked open, listening to water move over itself.He replayed the evening in fragments.The study.The inconsistency in the records.The realization that his uncle had chosen his family as deliberately as he’d chosen to vanish.Chosen family stayed because they wanted to.They left because they decided to.That thought stuck harder than the rest.He checked his phone. No new messages. No updates. Victor stayed quiet. The Concord stayed quiet too, which almost felt worse. When organizations like that went silent, it usually meant something had already been set in motion.Eventually, he drove back—not to Selene’s, not to the main house, but to a smaller apa

The day passed so fast that when the sun rose for the next day in Moravia, Eli was still wide eyed, face up on his bed - having not slept at all, his mind wondering on how long it would take for Selene to pass through this stage and when it would be right to let her know he had signed the deal with Virelia despite her being against it.Moravia didn’t wake all at once as if giving Eli a chance to get his mind together.It came in layers—light first, pale and unsure, slipping between buildings and catching on window edges. Fog followed, low, barely visible, rolling through courtyards and narrow walkways like it had nowhere better to be. The city moved the way people did after a long illness: careful, unhurried, aware of its own limits.Eli stood at the far end of the private care wing, near a tall window that overlooked the inner courtyard. A cup of coffee sat untouched in his hand, already cooling, the surface barely disturbed. He hadn’t noticed when he’d stopped drinking it.Below, th

Selene’s gaze lingered in the air longer than it should have, as though once it settled on Eli, there would be no undoing it, and she would be spilling more than she was willing to.“The Circle didn’t begin the way people think - the way you think,” she said after a moment. Her voice had steadied, but only just slightly. “It wasn’t born out of cruelty or domination. It started… idealistically.”Eli stayed still, attentive in the way he had learned to be over the years—present without pressure.“They called it the Meridian Circle because it was meant to be a meeting point,” Selene continued. “A convergence. Governments, corporations, research bodies, humanitarian organizations. The idea was simple: prevent collapse before it happened. Share intelligence before wars ignited. Control damage before it became catastrophe.”She let out a breath that trembled faintly at the end.“And for a while, it worked.”Eli frowned slightly. “You’re saying they were… good?”“I’m saying they were convinc

He had told her he would be careful.It was a small lie, delivered gently, the type of lie people told when the truth would do more harm than comfort. Eli had stood beside Selene’s bed, one hand tucked into his coat pocket, the other resting against the metal rail as if putting his hands there and holding on tight might keep him from leaving too quickly. Morning light filtered through the tall hospital windows, pale and tentative, catching in her hair and making her look more fragile than she liked to admit.“Get some rest,” he had said, forcing a steadiness into his voice. “I’ll be back before you know it.”Selene had known better.Her fingers tightened in the blanket, eyes narrowing just slightly—not in anger, but in realization. “You’ve already decided,” she said. Not a question. “You’re going to Hollowgate.”Eli hadn’t answered at first. He had watched the monitor behind her instead, the steady rise and fall of green lines, the quiet proof that she was still here. Still breathing.