Chapter 67: The Lingering Echoes

"Do you think she’s still out there?"

Julian’s voice came from the doorway, quiet but cutting through the silence like a blade. Lucian didn’t look up. His eyes were fixed on the holographic data stream hovering over his desk, lines of fluctuating code and anomaly waveforms spiraling endlessly. His jaw was tight.

"If she is," Lucian said, "I’ll find her. If she’s not… I’ll tear apart every law of physics until she is again."

Weeks had passed since Eva’s disappearance, but Thorne Tower still felt like a tomb. The vast steel-and-glass fortress had once been a symbol of power; now it was a place of grief, obsession, and quiet desperation. The staff moved like shadows, speaking in hushed voices. Security checkpoints had doubled. Every corner hummed with surveillance drones.

Lucian himself had become a ghost in his own empire; no board meetings, no social appearances, no contact with anyone outside the tower walls except the scientists he demanded progress from. Julian had been left to hand