The drive back to the mansion was unlike any return journey they had ever made. There were no urgent debriefings, no lists of tactical priorities, and no lingering sense of an unseen threat pressing against the edges of their reality. The city, once a labyrinth of shadow and resonance, had become nothing more than a city again.
Ren sat in the quiet of the transport, his gaze fixed on the passing landscape. He felt a profound sense of closure, not just with the threat of the machine, but with the remnants of the life he had brought with him from across the veil. That life, with its cold ambitions and its lonely, calculated power, now felt like a story read in a book — disconnected from the man he had become.
