Chapter 31. The Warning Rewritten

The world started ending at 2:17 a.m.

That’s when his phone began to vibrate on the desk—first one alert, then five, then too many to count.

Cassian ignored the first few. He thought it was just another late-night rumor cycle, another cheap headline feeding off someone else’s pain.

Then he saw Yara Mendes’s name on the screen.

The notification read:

BREAKING NEWS: INSIDE THE VALE LEGACY—NEW ALLEGATIONS EMERGE ABOUT SABOTAGE, DEBTS, AND A FATHER’S SHADOW

He didn’t click it. Not yet.

The gym was dark except for the small lamp on his desk. The rest of the building slept—the heavy kind of sleep that comes after exhaustion, not peace.

He stared at the article link until his vision started to pulse with his heartbeat.

When he finally opened it, the first line hit like a punch:

The ghosts we train always find new names.

Yara had written that before—he’d read it once in an essay years ago, after his suspensi