The room didn’t change.Not immediately.Not in any obvious way.The same dim light stretched across the floor. The same quiet pressed gently against the walls. The same untouched food sat where it had been for hours, forgotten.But something—Subtle. Shifted.Eli stood by the window, his hands in his pockets, his gaze unfocused as it rested somewhere beyond the glass.Zurich moved.Cars passed.People walked.Lights flickered on and off in distant buildings.Everything carried on.Everything except him.For once, he wasn’t reading reports.Wasn’t analyzing.Wasn’t trying to force pieces together that refused to fit.He was just… there.Still.The sound of the door opening broke the silence.It was soft. Unhurried.Eli didn’t turn right away.A small part of him already assumed who it was.Selene.Back again.Either she had forgotten something—Or she wasn’t done trying to convince him.He exhaled quietly, already preparing a response he wasn’t sure he believed himself.“…You’re persi

The next few days didn’t follow a pattern.They didn’t need to.For once, Eli wasn’t measuring time in outcomes or deadlines, wasn’t splitting hours into things that mattered and things that didn’t. He wasn’t chasing anything, wasn’t running through possibilities in the background of every quiet moment.He was just… there.Moving through the day as it came.And somehow—That was enough.It started small, almost unnoticeable at first. Then, without him realizing it, it stopped being small at all.By the second day, he was standing at the edge of Uetliberg Mountain, the city stretching wide and steady beneath them, buildings layered into the distance like something carefully placed rather than something chaotic.Carlos stood beside him with the kind of satisfaction that suggested he’d personally arranged the entire view.“Tell me this isn’t worth waking up early for,” he said, hands on his hips.Eli didn’t answer immediately. The air felt different up there—clean in a way that didn’t re

For a moment—Eli didn’t move. It also took a moment for his brain to process thoughts and his body to react.Lyra was close again.Too close.Closer than before.There was something different in the air now—not just tension, not just control.Something unstable. Unpredictable.Her breath brushed lightly against his skin, her gaze locked onto his like she was searching for something deeper this time. Not just a reaction from Eli. Confirmation.And still— Eli didn’t move.But his mind—His mind wasn't sleeping anymore instead it was catching up… Fast.Too fast.The pieces didn’t align.They refused to.Siblings.The word still sat there, heavy, wrong—And yet— Her actions didn’t match it.Didn’t even come close.And that— That was the fracture.The split second where something inside him shifted.Because her very action held little to know truth about what she had said.And for an instance something passed through Eli's mind again.This wasn’t about family. This was something else.So

The corridors didn’t change.That was the first problem.Not visually—no. They were clean, consistent, almost deliberately minimal in design. But after a while, that sameness stopped being neutral.It became intentional.Eli walked.And walked.And walked.Time stopped behaving like something measurable. There were no windows in most of the halls, no clocks, no sounds that marked progression. Just the steady rhythm of his steps and the quiet, controlled pace of his breathing.At some point—he stopped counting turns.Not because he couldn’t.But because it stopped mattering.Every variation he introduced—every change in direction, every deviation from pattern—led him back to the same conclusion.This place wasn’t confusing.It was contained. Carefully. Precisely.Built that way. Hours passed.He knew they did—not by any external cue, but by the subtle shifts in his own body. The weight settling deeper into his muscles. The dryness at the back of his throat. The faint tension starting t

The sky over Norway didn’t look hostile.That in its self made Carlos suspicious.From above, it stretched wide and open—endless sheets of muted gray-blue broken only by jagged landforms and scattered islands that looked almost… peaceful.Carlos scoffed knowing better.“Yeah,” he muttered under his breath, adjusting the controls slightly. “Looks nice until you try to land.”The helicopter cut steadily through the cold air, the low thrum of the blades vibrating through the frame. Wind currents here weren’t forgiving—sharp, unpredictable shifts that tugged at the aircraft just enough to remind him that this wasn’t controlled airspace.Not really.Below him— Nothing looked built for access.The terrain was uneven. Rocky. Fractured in a way that felt intentional rather than natural. Water cut through land in narrow, winding veins, isolating sections into near-perfect separations.Carlos’ eyes narrowed slightly as he leaned forward, scanning.“Come on…” he murmured.Coordinates only got hi