Chapter 195

The Prey

I stopped breathing.

It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real.

And yet, there he was.

The man who should have been nothing but a rotting corpse in the ground. The man I mourned, screamed for, begged to stay.

My father.

He stepped into the light, his face shifting between the past and present, between the man I remembered and the stranger who stood before me now. His suit was pristine, sharp as a blade, but his eyes—God, his eyes—were voids of madness. Black pits where something human once lived. White stubble and those unrecognisable eyes.

I wanted to run.

I wanted to vomit.

I wanted to believe this was just another nightmare.

Lucius chuckled beside me, shattering the silence like breaking glass. “Surprise.”

My throat locked, my muscles coiling so tightly they burned. I didn’t move. Couldn’t.

He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.

But he wasn’t.

He smiled, and it sent a shiver down my spi