Ethan looked at the people standing before him.
His eyes moved slowly across their faces, lingering on each one as if trying to burn their images into his soul. Elina. Anna. Jack. Albert. Erina. Faces he had carved into the deepest layers of his existence long before he had ever touched the laws of creation.
His chest tightened.
It was not a metaphorical ache. It was physical. Sharp and Heavy. As if something long dormant inside him had suddenly awakened and refused to be ignored.
He had not felt this pain since the moment he had ascended beyond mortality, maybe a little after seeing Rose in pain.
Ethan did not suppress it.
For once, he allowed it to surface.
The warmth in his gaze, the longing buried behind his pupils, even the subtle tremble in his fingers as they rested at his side. He let it all show.
He was staring at his world.
His reason.
Everything he had ever built, destroyed, or rewritten had been for these people.
