The_Destiny

The morning came gray and hollow.

Lex walked with his hands buried in the pockets of a black jacket—one not torn and bloodied, but borrowed, dull, and anonymous. The streets were quieter this far from the city center, littered with old leaves and the kind of silence that felt intentional, like the world was holding its breath.

The cemetery sat behind a rusted iron gate. Not locked. Nothing in this city really was anymore.

Lex stepped through, boots crunching gravel. The names on the headstones passed in a blur. He didn't need to search. He'd been here before. Too many times.

Row 6, Plot 42.

Rose Walker.

A simple grave. No flowers. No trinkets. Just the name, the dates, and the cruel finality of a dash in between.

He stood there for a long while. Didn't say anything. Didn't need to.

The wind picked up. Cold, not biting, but enough to make his fingers ache.

He closed his eyes and saw her face.

Not in the final moment—he refused to remember that—but before. Laughing at something he said. Rolling her eyes when he snuck into the fridge for midnight snacks. Sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, singing along to a dumb commercial.

His throat tightened. He turned slightly, as if the wind might carry the pain away.

"I should've been there," he muttered. "I left you alone."

He crouched by the grave, resting a hand lightly on the stone. His voice barely above a whisper.

"I don't know what's happening to me, Rose. I don't know what that thing was, or why I'm still alive. But I'm going to find out. I'm going to make sure nothing like it touches anyone else again."

The words tasted like ash.

He didn't cry. Lex had already cried enough to drown a city. But something deep inside him ached in a way he couldn't bandage.

A flicker of motion in the corner of his eye.

He turned sharply. Nothing.

Birds rustled in the distance—then stopped. All sound drained out of the air. Even the wind fell still.

Lex stood, scanning the cemetery. No footsteps. No figures. Just the stillness. The wrong kind.

He was being watched.

Or followed.

Or both.

A low hum pulsed faintly from his coat pocket.

The fragment.

He didn't pull it out. Not here. Not now.

He stared at the sky, the clouds unmoving.

The dead had peace.

The living didn't.

Lex gave the headstone one last look. "I'll come back when I've got something to show you. Something real."

He walked away slowly, the grave behind him.

But the silence followed.