Inside the box was a photograph of Lucas as a child with his mother. On the back was frantic handwriting.
“I can’t hide it. He saw everything. Ethan must never know.”
Lucas’s memories came flooding back.
“The crash wasn’t an accident,” he whispered. “She wasn’t alone.”
A man stepped from behind a hidden panel—Mark Reynolds, a former engineer Ethan had fired years ago. He raised a gun at Lily.
Chaos followed. Mark was subdued. He confessed everything: embezzlement, threats, the chase that caused the crash. Lucas had seen it all.
The Nocturnes weren’t a disease.
They were a defense—creatures that sealed traumatic truth in darkness.
As dawn broke, Lucas’s vision slowly returned.
The first person he saw was Lily.
“Why did you help me?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I had one too. Mine didn’t blind me. It let me see the darkness in others.”
She left without taking a cent, asking only one thing—that Lucas never look away from the truth again.
Because the worst kind of blindness isn’t physical.
It’s the kind we choose.
