The wind didn't move.
The sky loomed low and colourless over Delver Hill Cemetery, pressing down like grief.
At the far end—where graves cracked and trees were sparse—a crooked tombstone leaned, as if it had surrendered.
Dust clung to its edges. The ground had sunk, and the cement slab split in two. Moss swallowed most of the name, but if you squinted past the decay, you could still make it out:
Adex Malik Richardson
1984 — 2024
Beloved Husband. Father.
He was thirty-nine when they buried him here.
And somehow, the grave already looked a hundred years old.
Far from the tomb, a man sat in the back corner of a city bar.
Not drinking.
Not talking.
Just… watching.
Adex Richardson was someone you'd notice, but not easily forget. Broad shoulders. Dark skin that glinted like warm stone. A short beard. Closely curled hair. And a faint scar arched over his left brow from a fight he didn't start or finish.
He wore a coat too warm for the weather. Carried himself like he expected to leave before anyone noticed he'd come.
He hadn't touched his glass in thirty minutes.
The music played softly, but Adex stood still, his sharp eyes scanning the room.
He looked alive.
But he wasn't.
Adex had been born into silence.
The kind that comes from an overworked single mother who never raised her voice, not even when she should've.
By fifteen, he packed his lunches.
By twenty, he was carrying men out of burning buildings.
He became a firefighter—a hero on paper.
But his real fire?
It was family.
He married young. Loved Serah hard. Raised Layla gently.
He thought it would be enough.
Until Serah betrayed him.
Until she fell into the arms of Collins Dane—Adex's best friend since childhood.
The same man who arranged the "accident" that ended his life.
Six months later, Adex walked again—not as a man. Not quite a ghost.
But something in between.
He didn't speak often. But when he did, it was slow and exacting—like a man who knew that words, like wounds, should never be wasted.
He left the bar without paying.
No one noticed.
The sky dipped into bruised dusk as he returned to the cemetery.
But something was wrong.
Where his broken grave had been, a new monument now stood.
Gold. Clean. Lit from beneath like an altar.
A crown of lilies circled the base.
Genevieve Aveline Laurent
1949 — 2025
Mother. Muse. Eternal.
Adex froze.
His name is gone.
His grave erased.
As if he'd never existed.
And beneath it, light spilt from a staircase descending into the earth.
He followed it.
Silence.
Then the soft clink of glass and silver.
She sat at a vanity of carved ivory. Dressed in white silk. Skin the colour of warm honey. Silver hair was waved and pinned. She moved like someone used to being watched.
Adex spoke, voice deep.
"Who are you?"
She smiled at him in the mirror.
"You must be Adex."
His spine stiffened.
"You replaced my grave."
"No," she said. "I claimed what was already abandoned."
He stepped closer, jaw tense.
"I'm not finished."
She turned her eyes sharply behind the grace.
"Neither is my daughter," she said.
"Which is why I brought you here."
She told him about her daughter, Eloise.
About Damien Holt—the man she's engaged to.
A vulture in a silk tie. The man who poisoned Genevieve in her final days.
"But I cannot touch him," she whispered.
"Not from here."
She stepped forward.
"You still have blood in your heart, Adex. Even if it doesn't pump."
He looked away.
"I'm not your soldier."
"No," she said softly. "You're a father."
He froze.
"I know about Layla."
"And the man who watches her sleep with lies in his teeth. The man who wore your best friend's face."
Adex's fists clenched.
"I can give you passage," she whispered.
"To haunt him. To stop him. To save her."
A pause.
"All I ask… is that you help my daughter too."
A long silence.
Adex reached out and took her hand.