Roger Allen, ex-detective, accidental space traveler, zero patience for bureaucratic nonsense, asked the one question nobody wanted to ask: how did he know? Somebody talked. And somewhere in the fallout of that question, Sara's family history landed on the table like a grenade. Freydis walked out of a council chamber a thousand years ago carrying the Artifact and her grief and exactly zero apologies. Sara is still carrying the weight of what that family became. Two women. Fifteen centuries apart. Both paying for other people's choices. That's the current running through this series, and it just got a lot stronger. See you next chapter.