Chapter 345
last update2025-10-09 01:03:04
Jack’s thoughts lingered in the half-darkness of the control room.

The quiet hum of Mars’s midnight systems pulsed like a heartbeat in the walls. Beyond the glass, twin moons hung low, watching him the way memories do — silent, patient, unblinking.

His breathing slowed. His eyelids drooped.

And then, from somewhere deep within the fog of memory, another face emerged.

One he had tried not to remember.

Vincent.

The prodigal son of Old Joe.

The boy who once called him brother.

The boy who couldn’t bear the shadow of another man’s strength.

The years rewound. The dust of Mars became the red clay of Draconia.

He saw it clearly now — the small house near the Reidsville cliffs where Old Joe had taken them both in. The place where it had all begun.

Jack had been a nobody then — a scarred orphan with too much anger in his eyes and too little future. Old Joe had found him half-dead after the riots at Northgate, nursed him back with herbal salves and quiet wisdom.

Vincent
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