The sky was heavy with gray, like a lid pressed down on the city. Rain clung to the windows of Arthur's apartment in thin, trembling lines, as if the sky itself had lost the will to cry properly. It had been two months since the train, and still, silence lingered—an echo in his bones that refused to fade.
Arthur sat at his desk, the room dim except for the flicker of the desk lamp. Files lay scattered before him, not from the case on the train, but something new. Something... off. A missing person case, buried under red tape. A name that shouldn't have stood out—Naomi Castell—yet did.
She was one of the minor passengers on the train, someone no one remembered clearly, a background blur in every recollection. And now she was gone.
Luke's voice crackled through the phone on speaker. "Still on it?"
Arthur didn't answer right away. He glanced at a faded photo Naomi's sister had given him. There was something haunted in her eyes—like she knew something she wasn't allowed to say.
"She's not just missing," Arthur finally said. "She disappeared a week after we got back. No signs, no leads. And the strange part? No one's even trying to find her."
"That's... not creepy at all," Luke muttered. "You think it's connected?"
Arthur leaned back in his chair, the chains around his wrists tightening—not real ones, but the weight of knowing. The weight of unfinished truths.
"I think the train was only the surface," he said quietly. "Something deeper is pulling the strings."
There was a beat of silence before Luke replied, this time more serious. "Are you okay, Arthur?"
Arthur looked down at his hands. They felt heavier lately. Slower. Like invisible manacles dug into the flesh every time he made a move. The guilt, the responsibility, the knowledge—he carried it all.
"No," he admitted. "But that doesn't matter."
He stood, grabbing his coat, the case file, and the still-burning questions that refused to leave him alone.
Later that day, Arthur found himself walking the narrow corridors of a modest apartment building on the city's west side. The place smelled of rust, old carpet, and forgotten lives. Naomi's last known residence.
The door to 3B stood ajar.
Arthur's instincts surged. Every lesson from his past life—the one he never spoke of—sharpened his senses. A subtle tilt of the door, footprints where there shouldn't be any, a faint scent of cologne, too fresh for a missing woman's home.
He stepped inside silently, Luke following a few paces behind. The apartment was eerily tidy. No signs of struggle. No packing either. Just... absence.
A note lay on the kitchen table.
Arthur picked it up.
If you read this, it's already watching. I shouldn't have spoken. I shouldn't have remembered. Tell Arthur—tell him the echo never stops. It just gets quieter until it breaks you.
There was no signature. Just a single symbol scrawled at the bottom—a circle with a jagged line through it. It wasn't random. Arthur had seen it once before.
In the coat pocket of Silas Graye.
Luke leaned over his shoulder, paling. "That can't be a coincidence…"
Arthur's eyes narrowed. The echo from the train wasn't fading. It was getting louder.
And now, someone wanted to make sure it never stopped.