“But from the little I remember, and from Angelica’s knowledge of the system, the multiverse, and everything I learned while living inside your soul these past months, I realized my race comes from an ancient lineage. A race that no longer exists. And even in a multiverse filled with countless lifeforms, species older than galaxies and species born yesterday, even then, a Stone Angel returning to existence would draw attention.”

  Angie moved toward him with quiet, deliberate steps, as if crossing some fragile boundary she feared might shatter. She sat beside him on the narrow bed, and the mattress dipped slightly under her weight. The space between them was small enough to feel intentional. When she leaned closer, her face drifted toward his until their noses and mouths were almost touching.

  “Even more so because I’m a female Stone Angel. Which means I can get pregnant. And I’m certain there are powerful psychopaths out there who would love to experiment on the body of a race that no longer exists.”

  The words hit him harder than he expected. Luke blinked, caught off guard. The seriousness in her eyes made it clear she wasn’t speculating. It was a cold, factual statement. And somehow he had never thought of it, not like that.

  Angie slowly pulled her face back, as if giving him room to process.

  “That’s why I don’t want to cause trouble for you. I know you’d be upset if something happened to this body… out of respect for Angelica’s memory.”

  The irony in her tone was sharp and quiet, almost cruel in its honesty. Her concern wasn’t for herself, but for how he would feel if she were harmed. The realization pricked at him — not pain exactly, but close.

  “So, my lord… staying hidden with you for a while, until we decide what to do next, is the safest choice for both of us.”

  Luke frowned, studying her. Her logic made sense, but her tone… it was too neat, too perfectly reasoned for him to take at face value.

  “You’re right,” he acknowledged. “But I get the feeling you’re only emphasizing all of that because you want to stay close to me and you’re trying to justify it.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to stay near you,” she replied without hesitation. “Even if that means appealing a little to your sentimental side.”

  That confirmed a suspicion. She was intelligent, dangerously so. It relieved him more than he expected. A naive mind could be shattered or manipulated with ease, and Angie’s existence, fragile in its own way, needed protection. If he ever convinced her to choose a path of her own someday, he wanted to know she wouldn’t walk into the world defenseless.

  As she stood, something stirred in his thoughts.

  “You don’t remember anything from your previous life? Not even your name?”

  “Not even my name.”

  The answer came fast, steady, without a flicker of doubt.

  “And Angelica’s memories?” he asked, cautiously. He wanted to understand, but he didn’t want to violate anything that had belonged to the woman Angelica once was.

  “I have all of Angelica’s memories. Angelica was a human woman, twenty-six years old, a virgin, born in a place called Texas. She loved her brother deeply, but he was killed trying to save her.”

  If Angie had all of Angelica’s memories… if pieces of her personality still lived on inside that stone body… then maybe it wasn’t something bad. Maybe it was something good.

  “Can you tell me what Angelica felt when she died?” Luke asked. His voice came out quieter than intended. “If it’s not something too personal… if it’s something the real Angelica would naturally choose not to share, then don’t tell me. I’d rather protect what’s left of her. But without overwriting who you are.”

  “Based on Angelica’s last intentions during your final interaction, she would have answered without hesitation.”

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  Luke drew a slow breath. That was something, at least. A way of preserving a part of her, even now, by asking what Angelica herself would have done.

  “Angelica’s feelings that night were chaotic, like a storm,” Angie said. “Moments of calm, moments of turmoil. A consequence of years of guilt. It began the night Angelica lost her brother. He died saving her. From that day on, she blamed herself for his death.”

  Angie’s voice carried no emotion at all. She recited the words with the detachment of a medical report.

  “She considered suicide many times. The strongest impulses came on nights when she thought about entering the second fortress alone and letting the Midnight Warden finish the job. But she couldn’t do it. She thought it would disrespect her brother’s sacrifice.”

  They were intimate details, raw and heavy, told with a flatness that made them sting even more. Angie was clearly struggling to grasp the weight of the memories she was relaying. Luke caught it in the small pause she made before continuing.

  “That was one of the reasons she went to help you. She wanted to be brave, like her brother,” Angie said. “And she was afraid of dying alone. So she preferred that you killed her, and also believed she was helping you by giving you experience points.”

  A pressure tightened in Luke’s chest, not only guilt, but the sudden clarity of how much Angelica had carried alone. Angie’s manner of speaking made it even sharper, because she was still trying to translate human emotion, analyzing each feeling like someone studying a painting without fully grasping what the colors meant.

  She stilled for a moment, her gaze drifting, as if sorting through the fragments of Angelica’s memories and lining them up in some logical order. Luke waited. He realized Angie needed time to process emotions the way a machine needed time to test each function.

  “The part about revenge… is difficult for my limited emotional matrix to interpret,” Angie finally said. “Angelica felt regret for putting that weight on you. But it was also a way to ease her guilt. She preferred that you focused on avenging her by killing Paul rather than being left with nothing except the memory of killing her.”

  The room grew heavier, thick with memories that weren’t his but now lived inside him anyway.

  “It was a crossroads for her,” Angie said. “She needed to tell you the truth about Paul, and she was dying. So she placed everything on you, because in you, she saw something of herself.”

  Angie rose slowly. Her movements were smooth, practiced, almost calculated, but something had changed. A faint hesitation, a flicker of something uncertain. It was as though the memory of Angelica contained some warmth she was trying to imitate, and failing, held back by limitations even she didn’t fully understand.

  “And in the end, my lord, you fulfilled every one of her wishes. You killed Paul. You avenged her brother. You saved all the humans she cared about from the tutorial, and you even removed her body from that place. And you brought her back to life, not entirely, of course. But that part would have made her happy, because in some strange way, it’s something her brother would have been happy about. That part is emotionally confusing for me.”

  There was truth in her words, not the warm, human truth of feelings, but the colder, analytical truth of someone carrying memories that weren’t originally theirs and trying to reassemble them into meaning.

  Luke rose as well. A simple movement, yet heavy, as if it dragged years of unspoken weight with it. He stepped closer and set a hand on Angie’s shoulder. It was skin, it looked human, but it wasn’t. To the touch, it was soft and almost warm, as if human skin had been dipped in ink until it turned completely gray. Her entire body carried that same smooth gray tone, and yet to the eye, its texture resembled stone. The presence beneath it carried Angelica’s echo, and at the same time, wasn’t her at all.

  When he met her gaze, he saw the outline of the woman who had died in his arms, the same bone structure, the familiar shape of the eyes. But behind them lived a different mind, one that observed the world like every second was a new discovery.

  “Thank you, Angie,” he murmured, feeling something invisible loosen inside his chest. Not all at once, but enough for the first real breath in a long time. “I know you’re not trying to manipulate me with any of this. I know those words came from the part of Angelica that still lives in you.”

  His original plan had been simple: take Angelica’s body back to Texas and bury her there. That was why he had kept her remains in his pocket dimension, waiting for the right time to honor a promise he had never spoken aloud. But fate had twisted that path into something else entirely.

  Angelica’s body had become a vessel, a bridge, the thing that allowed Angie to be born. And then Angie had saved him, dragging him out of the tutorial when he should have died. In a way, Angelica had saved him twice: once by dying so he could live, and once by being reborn as Angie and pulling him back from the brink.

  It was a debt Luke knew he could never repay. Maybe no one could. And that was why he accepted, without hesitation, the responsibility of protecting the fragment of Angelica that remained, this new being who carried echoes of a woman he couldn’t save.

  He glanced toward the bedroom door, quiet and shut, as if marking the line between what was past and what came next.

  “I’m going to have to place you in my soul for a while,” Luke said. “We’ll go to Maine together.”

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