THE GATE KEEPS FORTUNE 🔮🔮

Chapter 6: The Forgotten Name​

Chapter 6: The Forgotten Name

​Elias walked for hours, the wooden hummingbird tight in his grip. The city, once a place of opportunity, now felt like a vast, indifferent machine designed to crush the hopeful. He reached a dusty, overlooked district far from the glittering skyscrapers of the Vancroft’s world, sinking his remaining funds into a tiny, airless room above a convenience store. He felt an emptiness he had never known—not just the loss of Sofia, but the loss of his belief that merit could overcome circumstance.

​He spent the next few days in a fog, aimlessly searching for any form of manual labor. He helped unload trucks, washed dishes, and felt himself slipping further into despair. His resolve, so strong when he had the gatehouse as a base, now felt brittle. He had nowhere to go, no one to turn to.

​One evening, while resting on a bench near an old municipal park, an elderly man with kind but forgetful eyes approached him. The man, who introduced himself as Mr. Henderson, squinted at Elias.

​“Son, you look just like him. It’s been forty years, but the resemblance is uncanny. You must be Thomas’s boy.”

​Elias shook his head. “I’m Elias, sir. I don’t know any Thomas.”

​“Nonsense,” Mr. Henderson insisted, sitting down beside him. “You’re the spitting image of Thomas Aethelred. Fine man, your father. Shame he left so young. Your grandfather, Alistair, never got over it. Put everything in that Aethelred Trust—only to be opened when you, the grandson, reached the age of twenty-five. I remember the old solicitor, Mr. Sterling, handling the papers, saying it was a massive fortune, enough to shake a stick at. Very eccentric, your grandfather was.”

​Elias listened, numbly. The name Aethelred meant nothing. He’d only ever been Elias. He assumed the old man was confused or perhaps delusional. “I think you have the wrong person, Mr. Henderson,” Elias said gently, getting up to leave.

​“The lawyer! Sterling and Associates, near the old docks,” the old man called out, slightly louder. “Go see them, son. Don’t waste your chance.”

​Elias simply nodded to be polite and continued walking. The words barely registered. He had real problems: finding food, securing his next day’s labor. Fantasies of rich grandfathers seemed cruel given his current reality. It was only later, lying sleeplessly in his cramped room, staring at the ceiling, that a cold dread mixed with a faint spark of curiosity. The old man’s details had been specific: Thomas, Alistair, twenty-five, Sterling & Associates. What if, just what if, there was a tiny kernel of truth to the incredible story? He decided that having nothing to lose was the only motivation he needed to pursue a ghost.