They stayed on the mountain a little longer than planned, long enough for the light to settle into something ordinary again. Breakfast was simple. They ate without much talk, sharing what they had, the silence between them no longer something that needed to be filled. When they finally started down, the path felt different. Not easier, not shorter, but familiar in a way it hadn’t been before.

The journey back passed quicker.

Charles didn’t brace himself against every turn the way he had before. He sat with a steadiness that came from somewhere he hadn’t known he had. Yiannis, on the other hand, seemed to lose the edge he had been carrying. The moment he settled beside Charles in the wagon, he drifted off, like the weight he had been holding had finally eased.

Their nights changed after that.

The routines they had fallen into didn’t return. There was no need. They slept instead, side by side, the space between them filled without effort. Charles didn’t question it. He didn’t look for what had shifted or why it had stopped.

He already knew.

By the time they returned, the house was no longer just waiting for them. Their families were there too, gathered in a way that felt intentional. It didn’t take long for everyone to notice what had changed. It was in the way they stood, the way they looked at each other without realizing it.

Nothing needed to be explained.

Lunch stretched into something more than a meal. Questions came, some direct, some not. Plans followed quickly after.

“Soon,” Yiannis said when asked.

Charles nodded. “We’ll leave the details to you.”

It was settled just like that.

Three months, they decided. Enough time to prepare, to arrange what needed arranging.

But time didn’t wait.

A few weeks later, the news came quietly at first, then all at once. Charles was with child.

Everything shifted again.

Plans moved faster. The wedding was brought forward, compressed into something that felt sudden and inevitable at the same time. Within a month, they stood before their families, the ceremony simple but full in ways that mattered.

After that, life settled.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud. It was steady. Days passed into each other without resistance. There was a kind of peace in it, something Charles hadn’t known he would recognize, let alone accept.

They waited.

By the seventh month, the waiting had become something tangible, something that shaped their days.

That was when the storm came.

It didn’t arrive all at once.

At first, it was just rain.

Yiannis had already left by then, traveling with Charles’s father to Egypt for trade. The sky had been overcast when they arrived, but nothing unusual. Rain came and went. The kind people worked through without stopping.

Then the wind changed.

Back home, the town felt it first as a shift, a pressure in the air that made people pause without knowing why. The sea, which had always moved with a kind of rhythm, grew restless. Waves struck harder against the shore, pulling back faster than before.

The rain didn’t stop.

It thickened.

What had been a steady fall turned into something heavier, harder, driven sideways by a wind that didn’t hold a single direction. Doors were shut. Windows secured. People called out to each other across the rising noise, voices strained but still holding.

Then it worsened.

The wind rose in a way that felt unnatural, tearing through the streets, lifting anything not anchored down. The sea broke past its edge, spilling into places it had never reached before. Water rushed in, not slowly, not carefully, but all at once.

The town tried to hold.

It didn’t.

Structures gave way under the pressure, roofs torn loose, walls cracking where they should have stood. The sound of it filled everything. Wood splintering. Voices shouting. The sharp crash of something heavy being thrown aside like it weighed nothing.

Melia tried to gather what she could.

Willahelm stayed with her, moving without hesitation, pulling, lifting, holding where he could. The others followed, but it became harder to see who was where, harder to hear anything clearly through the storm.

The water kept rising.

It swallowed the streets first, then the spaces between homes, then the homes themselves. What had been solid ground turned uncertain, shifting under force that didn’t slow.

Charles was inside when it reached them.

The walls held for a moment longer than expected, then gave in with a sound that didn’t feel real. Water rushed through, cold and violent, tearing everything from where it stood. There was no time to react, no space to choose.

It took what it could.

It took everything.

Far away, Yiannis felt none of it until it was already done.

In Egypt, the storm had arrived later, stronger, cutting off any chance of return. The sea turned against them, waves rising high enough to make even the most experienced hesitate. They were held there, forced to wait as the storm passed over land they could not reach.

By the time the winds eased, it was too late.

They sailed back as soon as they were allowed, but what waited for them was not the town they had left.

It was ruin.

What remained stood broken, scattered along a shore that no longer looked the same. The water had receded, but it had left its mark everywhere. Silence replaced the noise, heavy and final.

Yiannis didn’t wait.

He moved before the boat had fully settled, stepping onto what was left of the ground and running without direction, only instinct. He searched through what remained, calling out names that didn’t answer.

“karlaz!”

The word broke against the emptiness.

There was no response.

He kept moving, hands scraping against debris, pushing aside what he could, ignoring the way it cut into him. Time blurred, stretched thin between each breath.

Then they found the first body.

Melia.

She floated near the edge of the shore, carried there by a current that had no purpose now. Her face was still, the tension gone from it, leaving something that felt wrong in its calm.

Yiannis stopped.

For a second, everything else fell away.

Then the next came.

Willahelm.

Then others.

Faces he knew. Names he had spoken only days before. Each one placed in front of him without warning, without mercy.

But not Charles.

They searched.

They kept searching.

Hours passed. Then more.

The sea gave back what it wanted.

It did not give him that.

Yiannis stood at the edge of the water as the light began to fade again, his chest rising and falling too fast, too uneven to steady.

“He made it,” he said, though no one had asked. “He had to.”

No one answered.

The water moved quietly now, as if nothing had happened.

And still, there was no sign of him.