All Chapters of Torin-Shattered: Way Down We Go (Part 1): Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

The laughter that followed settled something inside me that had been tense all day. I used to think comfort came from silence. Now I knew it came from voices. People. Places that felt lived in.I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded note. Everyone at the table stilled without meaning to.“Can I see it?” Jess asked quietly.I hesitated only a moment before handing it to him. Jess opened it carefully, like it was fragile enough to crumble. His jaw tightened a little as his eyes skimmed the words.He handed it back. “That looks like her handwriting,” he said.“How do you know what her handwriting looked like?” I asked.Jess shifted his weight, something flickering across his expression. Regret. Or guilt. Or something between the two.“I saw old paperwork from the compound years ago,” Jess said. “Before the raid. Before everything went to hell. I recognized it.”I studied him. “Jess,” I said softly. “Did you know more about her than you told me?”He held my gaze. “I knew enoug

~ MARLOWE ~The next evening arrived with the kind of heaviness that settled beneath my skin and refused to leave. It felt like all the air around me had thickened, like the city was holding its breath on my behalf. I spent most of the afternoon sketching without drawing anything at all. My pencil moved, but my mind was somewhere else. Somewhere older. Somewhere I had avoided for far too long.Torin stayed close but quiet, giving me room to pace the loft like a restless ghost. Rook watched me for a while before telling me to sit, which I did for five whole seconds before standing again. Reif asked if I wanted him to come with us, even though we both knew this was not his burden to carry. Tannin made me tea in an attempt to soothe my nerves, but I barely tasted it.Only Jess seemed calm, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, observing me like he was waiting for something to click.When the clock hit six, Torin picked up his keys and gave me a look that was more gentle than

The loft went quiet again after the laughter faded. Rook sprawled in the chair. Tannin sipped cereal milk straight from the bowl. I watched the sunlight shift across the floor and thought about all the parts of me that had changed. All the parts that had healed. All the parts that were still stitching themselves together.I wasn’t that seventeen-year-old girl anymore. I wasn’t the girl who flinched at loud voices or dim hallways. I wasn’t the girl who believed love could be taken away as punishment.I was building something new. With Torin. With Rook. With Tannin. With Reif. With Jess. With the life we had carved out of chaos and loss.Everything was shifting forward.Then my phone vibrated on the table beside me.I reached for it absently, but when I saw the name on the screen, my breath caught high in my chest.Burdock.My past didn’t just knock on the door.It called.~~The sunlight had shifted by the time I ended the call. It stretched long and warm across the living room floor,

The room felt too quiet. Too sharp. My stomach flipped.“They wanted control,” Burdock said softly. “Skye had claimed you. They wanted to claim you too.”Torin’s jaw clenched hard enough to hurt.Ginger squeezed his hand before looking at me again. “We tried to shield you,” she said. “We did everything we could without putting you in more danger.”I nodded slowly. The truth burned. It also made everything make a terrible, perfect kind of sense.Torin slid his hand over mine and laced our fingers together. That tiny gesture steadied the ground beneath my feet.Burdock exhaled. “You broke the cycle by leaving,” he said. “You walked away. You chose a life that belonged to you.”Ginger smiled through the tears in her eyes. “And look at you now.”I swallowed, feeling both small and powerful in the same breath. “Thank you for coming,” I said. “It means more than you know.”“We are here for as long as you want us,” Ginger said. “And we will leave the moment you do not.”I leaned into Torin,

~Marlowe~I found Ginger in the guest room sitting cross-legged on the bed, her gray-streaked red hair braided over one shoulder while she folded laundry like she hadn’t spent the last decade traveling the country with Burdock. She looked up the second I stepped into the doorway. Her eyes, warm and sharp all at once, softened in a way that made something inside me loosen.“Come on in, baby,” she said, patting the bed beside her. “You look like someone carrying something heavy.”I sat beside her slowly. The sketchbook trembled just enough in my hands that she noticed. Ginger always noticed.“What’s in there?” she asked gently.I opened it without answering. The photo slid out first—my mother with two toddlers who looked eerily like mirror halves of each other. Me and Rook. The note followed, old and creased and written in handwriting I didn’t recognize.Ginger inhaled sharply the moment she saw it.“You know it,” I whispered.She nodded once. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I do.”I swallow