Charlotte stepped closer, just enough to make sure he saw every line in her face. The years, the resolve, the parts of her that had hardened to survive.
“Henry Byron was left on my porch,” she said. “Catatonic. Dehydrated. Covered in your signature silence. No voice. Just… empty. Sad to say, his body was too far gone. He didn’t survive.”
For the first time, a shadow moved across Ward’s face—faint, but it was there. A flicker. Maybe amusement. Maybe something darker.
“He looked like your work,” Charlotte continued. “He looked like someone trained to disappear inside himself.”
Ward didn’t deny it. Didn’t blink.
“Who did you teach?” Graham asked suddenly, his voice hard. “Who picked up where you left off?”
Ward shifted slightly in the bed, a crackling sound from the sheets as his brittle frame moved. He turned his eyes to Graham, studying him like an afterthought. “Still trailing after her,” he murmured. “I always thought that was pathetic.”
Graham stepped forward, but Charlotte held out a hand—don’t. Her eyes never left Ward’s.
“You think dying gives you the last word?” she asked. “You think this is a curtain call?”
Ward’s lips curled again. “Charlotte… you were always the last word.”
The way he said it—like it meant something deeper. Like she had played a role she never understood. Her blood went cold.
“You don’t get to drag others into this,” she snapped. “If you’ve started something again—if someone is copying you…”
Ward exhaled slowly, eyes fluttering like the act of keeping them open cost him something. “They’re not copying. They’re completing.”
Silence hit the room like a dropped weight. Charlotte felt it in her bones. A chill spreading outward.
Graham took a step closer to her, no longer quiet. No longer passive. “Who?” he demanded.
But Ward didn’t answer. His breathing grew shallower. His lips parted slightly as if to speak—and then closed again.
The monitor beside his bed beeped once. Then again, slower.
Charlotte leaned in, close enough to feel his breath on her cheek. “Who are they coming for?”
Ward’s lips moved.
She tilted her head closer. Closer.
His voice, barely audible, rasped against the air. “They were always coming for you, Charlotte.”
The line on the monitor went flat.
A long, thin tone filled the room.
Charlotte didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Her heart thudded in her ears, but her expression stayed carved in stone.
Graham moved first, calling for the nurse, hitting the emergency button—but Charlotte didn’t follow him. She stayed where she was, watching the hollow shell of a man who had haunted her past leave this earth.
But his words stayed.
They were always coming for you.
Not Ward.
They.
Whoever picked up the thread weren’t just mimicking his crimes.
