58.

The gates of Caelan’s estate creaked open with the sound of finality. The black car that brought him back home glided into the driveway like a hearse carrying memory instead of death.

Will and Hope were waiting at the door.

Caelan didn’t meet their eyes.

“Don’t,” he said, voice low, as he brushed past them. His coat was soaked at the shoulders from the rain. His silver hair clung to the curve of his neck.

Hope followed behind him. “You told her.”

“I did.”

“You idiot,” Will said from the hallway, arms folded. “You absolute, poetic, lovesick idiot.”

Caelan didn’t answer. He walked straight to the glass doors at the end of the hall that opened into his private library. The doors groaned as he opened them. The scent of old books rose up like incense.

He stood in the doorway for a moment, as if expecting the memory to greet him.

Then he entered, letting the doors drift shut behind him.

Will ran a hand through his dark curls. “He’s spiraling.”

Hope shook her head. “No. He’s breathing.”

\---

The library was dim. Caelan didn’t turn on the lights. Moonlight poured in through the tall windows, spilling silver onto the polished floor. He dropped into the leather armchair in the corner, pulled off his coat, and let it fall to the floor.

He stared at nothing for a long time.

Then he whispered, “She didn’t scream this time.”

His voice echoed off the walls.

“She didn’t scream.”

He laughed softly to himself, a broken thing. Then he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“I told her everything,” he murmured to the quiet. “Everything. And she didn’t scream. She didn’t run.”

He leaned forward and pulled open the drawer beneath the side table. Inside was a leather-bound volume.

The first copy.

The one he had written with his bare hands when he first learned how to use them.

The one he had copied every decade since.

The Paranormal Encyclopedia. The heart of fantasy. The tombstone of his past.

He opened it slowly. The pages whispered under his fingers.

And he spoke to the book like it was her.

“I found you.”

The room swallowed his voice. A thousand books surrounded him like ghosts. And for the first time in centuries, Caelan let himself cry.

\---

Will and Hope sat at the kitchen island, watching the clock.

“He’s been in there for over an hour,” Hope said, tapping her nails on the marble.

Will poured a shot of whiskey and downed it. “He’s not coming out tonight.”

“You felt it too, didn’t you?” she asked.

Will didn’t answer immediately. He just stared at the rain sliding down the window. “When she touched the dragon statue,” he finally said, “it lit up. Only the spirit could do that.”

“Exactly.”

They sat in silence.

Hope murmured, “Do you think she’s really her?”

Will’s voice was quieter now. “She doesn’t have to be. He already believes it.”

\---

Inside the library, Caelan leaned his forehead against the book.

He was still trembling.

But through it all, something burned in him again. Not grief. Not memory.

Hope.

And the soft echo of her voice in his mind.

What if I need time?

He would wait.

He had waited longer for far less.

And now, he had something worth waiting for again.