Chapter Twenty-One

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE ICE HIT that night.

Not with drama.
Not with screams or crashes or chandeliers falling from the ceiling.

It hit like a secret.

Sharp. Fast. Quiet.

A sound like breath catching in the lungs of the world.

I was on the top deck when it happened.

Alarms didn’t go off. Not at first. Just the slow shift of gravity. The realization that something had changed. The hum of conversation turning to static. The knowing.

Then the orders.

Then the chaos.

I searched for her again. Harder this time.
Through the noise. Through the crowds.
Through the corridors starting to slant just slightly.

But she wasn’t there.

Not Evelyn.
Not Ghost.
Not even the kid in suspenders with the cereal-predictions.

Just people.
And panic.

And the weight of everything I hadn’t said.

I stood near the lifeboats, gasping in air I didn’t believe in.

I reached for my watch.

The hands were gone.

Not broken.

Gone.

And in their place—etched faintly into the glass—one word:

“RUN.”

But I didn’t.

Because I remembered what she said.

“Don’t disappear.”

So I stayed.

Until the ship tilted.

Until the screaming started.

Until the stars reflected in the ocean like broken mirrors.

Until the cold hit my chest like a memory of something I’d promised never to forget.

And just as the darkness began to swallow me—
Just as the world turned to silence—

I heard her voice.

Not out loud. Not behind me.

Inside me.

“Not yet.”