The message blinked on my screen one last time before vanishing: Alric Voss is waiting. Don’t be late.
For a moment, I just sat there in the dark. George was asleep beside me, his steady breathing grounding me in a reality that felt less and less solid by the hour. Prague. Alric Voss. A name I’d never heard, yet somehow it struck me with the weight of a thousand secrets. I had the gnawing sensation that once I stepped onto that plane, there would be no turning back.
The morning was cold and clean, as though the air itself had been reset. George insisted on accompanying me to the airport, but I told him no. If this summit was real, if what Mira had said was true, then walking in with anyone by my side would expose them. I needed to enter alone.
I boarded the plane with the silent efficie
