Epilogue
Callum
The sea had a way of pulling truths out of you. Maybe it was the quiet. The weight of nothing left to kill. Or maybe it was her.
Seraphina was asleep on the couch when I opened the journal again. The firelight made her skin glow like it remembered the sun, and for a second, I let myself believe we were normal. Two people who hadn’t burned the world down.
But lies were easier than loss. And peace? That was a myth for people who didn’t grow up in blood.
I turned another page. Then another. And then I found it.
A name. A list. Coordinates. And a phrase, circled in her mother’s hand:
Blackdawn is not gone. It never was.
My jaw clenched. I looked to Seraphina, her breath steady, unaware.
She’d fought like hell to escape the cage her father built. But what if he wasn’t done buildin’ ?
What if the monster wasn’t just alive—but multiplyin’?
I closed the journal, pulse a slow drumbeat in my ears. Somethin, was rising. Beneath the surface, beneath the lie of freedom.
She thought we were safe now. That it was over. But safety is just a pause between wars.
Outside, the wind shifted. The tide pulled out. And for a moment, I could almost hear it— A whisper. A warning. A promise.
“Dominic Vex was still out there. And I wasn’t done asking questions.”
I stood, starin’ out at the horizon.
There was work to do. Names to hunt. Monsters left in the dark.
And I wasn’t finished bein’ one.