Five years later...
July 28th, 2026
Time was supposed to heal. That's what they always said.
The old commanders, the grizzled veterans, they all told Rio that wounds would scar over, that the pain would dull. But for him, five years had done the opposite.
It hadn't dulled.
It hadn't faded.
It had calcified, hardened, become part of him.
The Rio Castellan who once left Cremont City with a hopeful smile and an oath to support his family no longer existed. That boy had died somewhere between his father's broken words and the crumpled divorce papers in the waste bin. What remained was a man remade by betrayal and duty.
Major Rio Castellan sat in his dim office, the glow of a desk lamp illuminating the smoke curling from the cigarette between his fingers. The air was heavy with the mingled scents of tobacco and whiskey. The once-clean soldier had picked up both habits over the years, and though his body rejected the poison, his mind craved it.
His storm-gray eyes, once filled with life and warmth, were now cold, steady, and unreadable.
He had grown his hair out, tied back into a neat ponytail that contrasted his otherwise austere presence.
A thin scar ran across his brow, a mark of his years in battle, but his expression remained calm, detached, as though nothing could reach the heart beneath.
Rio leaned back in his chair, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. The room was silent save for the faint hum of the barracks outside and the soft clink of ice against glass.
Five years. For five years, his mother hadn't stopped. Letters, texts, emails, endless phone calls at all hours. Sometimes she even sent people, strangers delivering packages, notes, flowers with no sender's name.
She had even flown across the sea once, arriving in the very country he was stationed in. He hadn't seen her, hadn't allowed it. Fate, or perhaps sheer luck, had him deployed elsewhere when she arrived. He never bothered to return her attempt.
Every effort she made, every desperate plea, was met with the same reaction from him. Silence.
In his eyes, Isabela Castellan was already dead.
But tonight, something gnawed at him. Maybe it was the liquor warming his veins, loosening his restraint. Maybe it was the smoke clouding his judgment. Or maybe, deep down, some echo of the boy who once adored his mother still lived, a ghost that refused to vanish.
Rio leaned back in his chair, cigarette smoke curling toward the ceiling, the bottle of whiskey already half-drained on his desk. He rubbed at his temple, the liquor burning through his veins, when his eyes fell on something that hadn't been there yesterday.
A letter.
It lay neatly on the corner of his desk, the envelope stark white against the dark wood. No one in his barracks would dare place it there without his knowledge. Which meant only one thing, it had been delivered, personally, persistently, just like all the others.
Rio stared at it for a long moment, the name on the corner written in elegant, familiar cursive.
Isabela Castellan.
Another one.
For five years, the letters hadn't stopped. Some had been long confessions, spilling out endless apologies, explanations, and pleas. Others were simple, desperate, just his name written again and again across a page. Some reeked of perfume, others carried a pressed flower, as if she wanted to force pieces of home into his hands. He had burned many, left others sealed and unread. But they kept coming, relentless, unending.
He picked up this one slowly, his fingers brushing the seal. He thought about tearing it in half without opening it. He thought about tossing it into the waste bin with the others. But something, curiosity, or maybe just the whiskey, stayed his hand.
Rio broke the seal.
The letter inside was short, written in a trembling hand. No accusations. No lengthy pleas. Just a few lines.
"My son,
Please come back.
I will explain everything.
- Mama"
That was it. Nothing more. Yet the words cut deeper than any of her desperate ramblings.
Rio read it twice, then a third time. He found no comfort, no warmth, only strangeness. Her voice, once so vivid in his memories, now felt distant, alien. This was not his mother. This was a ghost who refused to stay buried.
He crushed the letter in his fist, his storm-gray eyes cold, unreadable. He tossed it onto the desk, reaching for his glass instead.
The crumpled paper fell onto the desk with a dull sound.
"Explain everything…" he muttered, his tone low, bitter. "There's nothing left to explain."
He downed the whiskey in one swallow, the burn spreading through him. Then he rose from his seat, leaving the crumpled letter where it lay, abandoned like all the others.
To Rio Castellan, Isabela was already dead.
The thought twisted in his mind. What could she possibly explain? The betrayal? The affair? The divorce? The way she and his sisters abandoned his father? The endless silence from Alessandra, Marcella, Selene, all the girls he once loved as his blood?
What explanation could wash that away?
For a long time, he sat there in silence, staring at the cigarette smoldering between his fingers. He took a slow drag, exhaled the smoke, and let it curl around him like a shroud.
His mind drifted back, back to the little apartment in Cremont City.
To his mother's arms around him, her tears falling on his shoulder as she begged him not to go.
To his father's sad smile, the one he never understood until it was too late.
To his sisters' furious, tearful eyes watching him leave from the window.
Once, that memory had been warm, bittersweet. Now, it was just another knife twisting in his chest.
"They're all dead," he murmured to himself. "To me, they're dead."
He stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. He grabbed his bottle of liquor, poured another glass, and downed it just as quickly as the first. The numbness spread through him, dulling the edges of pain, but not erasing it.
And in that quiet, in the haze of smoke and liquor, he realized something.
He was no longer running from the past. He was burying it.
Isabela Castellan was already dead. His sisters, his father, all of them, gone. Cremont City was a graveyard he would never return to.
The boy who once carried the hope of holding them together was gone too.
All that remained was the soldier.
Rio lit another cigarette, rose from his seat, and walked out of the office, leaving the crushed letter behind.