CHAPTER 41: CHOICES

He didn’t even flinch.

The man, that man, looked straight past her as though she were nothing but a trick of light and air. There was no flicker of recognition, no ghost of emotion, no tremor in his gaze that once softened whenever he looked at her.

He simply walked on, his stride measured, the aura around him sharp and regal, the same kind of disciplined authority Richard once carried when leading his squad, except now, it was colder. Detached. Hollow.

Ahce stood motionless in the middle of the sunlit pier, her coffee cooling rapidly between her palms. Around her, the world went on, waves lapping gently against the docks, tourists laughing, seagulls circling lazily overhead, but all she could hear was the deafening rush of her own heartbeat.

Her chest felt tight, too tight, as though the air itself refused to enter her lungs. Her lips parted, her throat straining against disbelief.

"Richard?" The name came out in a whisper so faint the wind almost stole it away.

He didn’t turn. Her hands trembled. Logic screamed at her to let it go. Maybe it wasn’t him, maybe her mind was playing cruel tricks after years of chasing ghosts. But her heart... her heart refused to listen.

When she finally tore herself away from the pier, the city had already begun to glitter with evening light. Neon signs painted the streets in fragments of color, red, blue, and gold, but everything looked distant, blurred. She walked without destination, feet carrying her through crowded sidewalks until she reached the quiet villa she had rented under a false name.

She dialed her secretary’s phone.

"Let’s abort the mission."

Inside, the silence was unbearable. The hum of the city outside the glass walls mocked her restlessness. She caught her reflection in the window, eyes hollow, hair slightly disheveled, a woman haunted by the shadow of someone who might no longer exist.

I can’t believe I’ll see him while traveling in another country...

She couldn’t sit still. Her hands found the console before she could think. The rhythm of the old craft returned to her fingers like second nature. She began to trace him.

Every step he took after vanishing from her sight, every intersection, every corner, she hunted them all. She hacked into the local traffic surveillance, bypassed firewall after firewall, and fed the data through Zeiren’s encrypted system. Lines of code scrolled across the screen like falling rain.

Then, there.

A black, armored vehicle. No license plate, no registry, no public trace. The man who looked exactly like Richard entered its backseat without hesitation. Moments later, it sped off toward the restricted district at the northern edge of the capital.

Ahce’s access was severed halfway through the feed, but not before she caught a glimpse of the emblem etched into the car’s door, a silver falcon coiled around a blade.

The crest of the Razalo Family...

Her pulse stuttered.

The Razalos, one of the three ducal houses of Xirudah, old money and military brilliance bound by blood. Their empire stretched through biotechnology, defense contracts, and black-budget research. Even the royal bloodline tread carefully around them.

What business would he, if it truly was him, have with them?

Ahce leaned back in her chair, eyes narrowing as she pieced the fragments together. Hours bled into days as she dug deeper, her screen filled with classified data, leaked ledgers, and censored news archives.

Every record of the Razalo household screamed secrecy. Hidden facilities buried beneath research fronts. Private armies disguised as humanitarian divisions. International contracts written in invisible ink. And then she found a name.

Reichardt Razalo.

The Duke’s "adopted son."

His face, his build, his posture, the slight tilt of his head, all of it mirrored Richard Jing. But the official records claimed that Reichardt had lived under the Razalo household for the past four years.

Four years?

The exact length of time Richard had been gone from City C. The realization hit her like a thunderclap. If this man were Richard, reborn, rewritten, or rebuilt, then he wasn’t just alive. He was theirs.

And if she wanted to reach him, she couldn’t do it as Ahce Shang, the anonymous writer, the hidden hacker, the ghost in Zeiren’s shadow. She needed a name that could breach the walls of nobility, a banner powerful enough to make even the Duke of Razalo acknowledge her existence.

That meant awakening the bloodline she had sworn never to touch.

The Pentecase family, her mother’s lineage, was not merely noble. They were royalty’s equal. The First Ducal House of Fienro, a neighboring nation whose influence stretched across half the continent. The Pentecase crest, twin swords cradling a phoenix in flame, had once commanded the loyalty of entire armies.

Her grandfather, Duke Piel Pentecase, was a man of both legend and ruthlessness. His name alone could open gates sealed to all others. Yet his family line had withered. His sons long dead, his daughters married off to distant kingdoms, his legacy waiting to fade into history. And now, perhaps, into her hands.

Ahce packed lightly. She sent a message to her parents and grandmother, "I’m leaving for research on a new book", a gentle lie, one that protected them from truths too dangerous to know. Then she boarded the next airship bound for Fienro.

The journey took less than a day but felt like an eternity.

When she arrived, the Pentecase city glowed with an unsettling majesty, a kingdom suspended between centuries. Towering spires of obsidian metal rose from ancient stone foundations. Shimmering holographic wards traced the air like runes. The scent of rain mixed with iron as soldiers in black-and-silver armor patrolled beneath banners of the phoenix aflame.

At the great gates of the estate, two retainers in ceremonial garb met her. They did not question her claim. The encrypted lineage seal she presented glowed with authentication codes no forger could mimic. They bowed and led her through marble corridors lined with portraits of her ancestors, faces carved with the same steel in their eyes she felt burning within her now.

And then she met him.

Duke Piel Pentecase.

Even at eighty-seven, his presence filled the grand hall like a tempest waiting to break. His eyes, pale and unblinking, seemed to cut through flesh and thought alike. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of generations.

"So," he said slowly, gaze fixed on her. "You’ve finally come, the granddaughter of Eutiquio Piel, my most stubborn son."

Ahce knelt before him, her pulse steady despite the gravity of the moment.

"Your Grace," she said clearly, "I am Ahce Shang. I come to claim my right as a descendant of the Pentecase bloodline, and to take the Successor’s Trial."

A murmur rippled through the gathered councilmen. The Duke’s lips curled faintly, neither smile nor scorn, only curiosity sharpened by time.

"You understand what that entails, child?" he asked. "The Trial spares neither blood nor mercy. Those who fail are erased from the lineage entirely."

"I understand," she replied. Her voice did not shake. "I didn’t come to be spared. I came to survive."

For a long, silent moment, Piel Pentecase studied her. Then, at last, he nodded once, a spark igniting behind his ancient eyes.

"Then rise, Ahce Shang of the Pentecase blood," he said. "Let us see if the phoenix in your veins remembers how to burn."

As she rose beneath the shimmering crest of her ancestors, the oath formed silently in her heart. This wasn’t about ambition. This was the beginning of the war.

The first step toward piercing the heart of the Razalo dynasty, toward standing before Reichardt Razalo, the man who might have once been Richard Jing, and uncovering what truly became of the man she loved.

Even if it meant walking through fire to bring him back.