The rain returned that night, soft and whispering like secrets on glass.
Elsa sat alone in the west wing library, where no one ever bothered her. Books loomed like silent witnesses, and the crackling fireplace offered little warmth.
She held the photo in her hands.
The ink on the back still felt fresh. Like Silas had written it just moments ago. Like he was standing right behind her.
She hated how her hands trembled.
Hated more that part of her heart still remembered the smell of his cologne. The way he used to say her name like it was sacred.
She had buried him.
Now, like a ghost, he'd dug himself out.
Why now?
Why Chess?
She couldn't make sense of it.
Did he come to win her back? To destroy Chess? Or... to watch the Jeffersons fall?
She didn't know which answer scared her more.
Across the city, in a penthouse Chess rarely used but always owned, he stared at a surveillance feed on a tablet.
Silas Kade. Age unknown. Former intelligence asset turned ghost. Once infiltrated five boardrooms, three crime syndicates, and a government agency… all in the same year. Then disappeared.
Until now.
Chess zoomed in on the latest footage. Silas had walked into a bar on Indigo Row, greeted the bartender by name, and paid for his drink in old-world currency — a silver drachma from the lost country of Kaelis.
A message.
Chess smirked.
You're not the only one who speaks in riddles, Silas.
He put the tablet down.
Then his eyes shifted to the katana on the wall.
It hummed faintly.
Even the blade could sense the incoming war.
Meanwhile, Silas Kade sat in a dimly lit hotel lounge, sipping brandy.
A woman approached him. Sharp heels. Blood-red lips.
"You were followed," she whispered in Russian.
"I know."
"Do we proceed?"
He turned his glass slowly.
"Soon," he said. "Once I find out what she sees in him."
"You mean love?"
Silas didn't answer.
He didn't believe in love.
Not anymore.
Back at the Jefferson estate, Elsa heard footsteps behind her.
She didn't look up.
"I know it's you."
Chess stood in the doorway, silent.
"You don't ask questions," she said quietly. "You don't demand answers. Why?"
Chess walked in and sat across from her.
"Because the truth's already in your eyes."
Elsa looked up at him.
There was something raw in her gaze. Unspoken.
"You think I still care for him," she said.
"I know you do."
Silence.
Elsa almost flinched at how calm he was.
"I don't blame you," Chess added.
"Why not?"
He leaned forward, voice lower.
"Because I know what it feels like… to love someone who only existed in a moment. And then vanished."
Elsa looked down at the photo again. Then into the fire.
"I don't know what's real anymore."
"You're not supposed to," he said gently. "Not yet."
She met his eyes.
And for the first time… she saw something deep in them. Something buried beneath the cold and the clever.
Loneliness.
Like hers.
But worse.
He stood and moved toward the door.
"Rest," he said. "Tomorrow, we prepare."
"For what?"
He paused.
"War."
Far away, in a monastery hidden in the mountains of Shunrai Province, a monk read the wind and murmured:
"The dragon awakens.But so does the ghost who once wore its skin."