Alex stood there but said nothing.
Not because he was reconsidering. Not because he was overwhelmed.
But because words would have been wasted.
Why wouldn't he continue?
What else was there?
Even if the odds were so impossibly low that any sane man would walk away, he would still do it. This wasn't a question of choice—it never had been. His mind was made up the moment the flames swallowed his home, the moment the screams died in silence, the moment the world betrayed everything he loved.
So let her mind games end.
Let the guilt-laced warnings fade.
He would carry this path through to the end, no matter what it cost.
The holographic image of Mona—frozen in time yet somehow watching him through it—stared ahead with eyes that seemed to pierce the very flow of space itself. There was something almost divine in her gaze, not omnipotent, but knowing. As if she had seen this moment before it came to pass. As if she had predicted his silence.
