CHAPTER 464: THE WORDS...

Evaline:

The afternoon sun filtered through my bedroom windows in soft golden sheets, the light warm but not enough to ease the heaviness inside my chest. My fingers moved automatically as I scrolled through the pages of yet another soul-death report, the characters blurring for a moment before sharpening again.

Dates.

Times.

Locations.

The exact same conditions.

The same chilling conclusion stamped across every medical file:

No wounds.

No energy loss.

No poisoning.

No curse detected.

Cause of soul absence... unknown.

My jaw tightened.

Unknown.

Unknown.

Unknown.

Every file mocked me with the same answer.

Just then, the bedroom door opened with a soft creak.

I looked up.

Rowan stepped in, the soft thud of his boots muffled by the carpet. He carried a tray in his hands with two glass cups, steam rising in gentle swirls from the herbal tea inside them, and a bowl filled with salted potato chips.

"It’s tea time," he announced softly with a smile, nudging the door shut with his foot.

I couldn’t help returning the smile, even if faintly.

He placed the tray on the study table, settled into the chair next to me, and poured the herbal tea into the tiny glass cups. The soothing scent of mint and lemongrass drifted up instantly.

"Here," he murmured, placing my cup gently in front of me.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

He hummed, picked up a chip, and leaned forward, peering at my laptop screen.

"So?" he asked, crunching down on the chip as he narrowed his eyes. "Anything stand out? Any clue? Anything our dear professor might have overlooked?"

I shook my head, letting out a long, weary sigh. "Nothing. Not a single damn thing."

He grimaced. "That bad?"

"Worse," I muttered, tapping one of the reports on the screen. "These reports... they are just stating things we already knew. Time, place, circumstances. All useless. No cause. No explanation. All the investigations leading to dead ends."

His brows furrowed deeper. "No curse marks?"

"None."

"No tampering?"

"None."

"No indication of spiritual residue or-"

"Nothing, Rowan," I said, rubbing my forehead. "Literally nothing."

For a moment, all we could hear was the quiet ticking of the clock on the wall and Rowan’s steady, annoyed crunching of another potato chip.

He let out a slow breath, leaning back. "So Kieran’s team really had gone through all this."

"Yeah," I whispered. "And for once, I hate that he was right."

Rowan smiled humorlessly. "It stings, doesn’t it?"

"Very."

But despite our disappointment, we worked in silence for the next hour, diving into the next folder of the old cases from nearly four centuries ago. These were ancient files, grainy scans of handwritten notes.

"Look at this," Rowan said, scrolling through. "No exact date of the first case. No details about how they stopped. No mention of a cure."

His voice softened at the last part.

And my heart clenched painfully.

"Nothing about whether they woke up," I whispered, my throat tightening.

That silence... that absence of an answer... it terrified me more than the worst possibility.

Because if they never woke up...

I swallowed hard.

No.

I refused to accept that.

"There has to be a cure," I said, my voice trembling but firm. "There has to be. There’s no way this just... ends with them never waking up. There has to be something. Some lead. Some clue. Something they overlooked."

"I know," Rowan murmured, placing his hand briefly over mine. "We’ll find it. Even if these files won’t help, we’ll find it."

But the disappointment between us felt suffocating.

We went through every page, every record, every old reference... and still found nothing.

Nothing that could save Draven.

Nothing that could save any of them.

Eventually, Rowan left and the rest of the day passed by in a blur. None of my mates asked if I found anything in the reports, probably because they all knew the answer all along.

And later in the night, sleep refused to grace me.

I lay on my side, staring at the ceiling, frustration knotting in my stomach. The beautiful view of the bright moon outside the glass wall did nothing to quiet my thoughts.

Oscar slept beside me, his breathing soft and even. His arm was draped around my waist, protective even in unconsciousness. I carefully slipped out from under his arm, making sure not to wake him, and sat up.

My mind felt like a storm... chaotic, restless, desperate.

If the reports had nothing...

If the old records had nothing...

Then where was I supposed to look next?

I glanced at my phone on the nightstand.

It was nearly midnight.

I didn’t want to disturb my friends. So instead, I opened the gallery.

And my heart instantly softened when the first image was of Lioren - his gummy smile, his bright eyes, his chubby hands reaching for the camera.

I exhaled, some of the tension easing as I scrolled through the dozens of pictures and short videos. Him wrapped in a blanket, him chewing on his toys, him sleeping with one arm across his forehead like Kieran, him giggling into Oscar’s chest, him frowning just like River.

But after the Lioren folder came another category - screenshots, document snippets, study notes, random pictures I had meant to sort through and delete after the term ended.

Well... I wasn’t sleeping anyway. Might as well sort through them.

I started deleting old screenshots, useless notes, repeated pictures.

Swipe. Delete.

Swipe. Delete.

And then...

I paused.

I came across the photos I had taken from the old soul-death archive when I visited the abandoned council headquarters.

Even looking at them brought a sharp, bitter taste to my tongue.

"Useless," I muttered, opening the first image only to delete it immediately.

Then I opened the second photo - ready to delete it - but my thumb froze... and so my blood.

I stared at the words that had somehow caught my attention even though I wasn’t paying any.

Words that shouldn’t have been there.

Words that stopped my breath.

My hand trembled, thumb hovering over the screen as my heart slammed against my ribs.

"No..." I whispered.

I zoomed in, pulse roaring in my ears.

There was no mistake.

It was there.

The words I hadn’t seen in ANY of the soul-death reports earlier.

My heart pounded so hard it hurt. The world around me seemed to sharpen, then blur, then sharpen again.

"Oh my god..."

I stared at the words again.

And again.

And my entire body went cold.