Hello everyone!

Here is the new chapter for the story. Sorry for the slow update, school is about to start and this year I have extra exams in September... I am changing school and there's tons of stuff I need to revise.

I hope you enjoy!

I remember that January night well. The sky was howling in rage, spitting and tossing snow against us. The weather was so freezing that hardly anyone dared to venture out, let alone in the evening

Everything seemed to bode well for us: this new year had already brought us a discrete amount of wealth from smuggling and a handful of recruits. All in all, I felt slightly more confident than usual even though this did not mean I afforded myself any rest.

I hadn't heard form Shay yet. The last news about him dated weeks and weeks before, when a mercantile ship had reported us to have seen his vessel docking on a small Portuguese island to refill. Even though I knew that returning would take more than going because of the impetuous winter sea, Shay was due any moment now.

Only, I had not expected him on that very same evening.

I was warming up in front of the fireplace. It was about time to go to bed but I did not feel like sleeping at all. I had had a long and angry argument with a couple of my brothers- among whom also Hope- about the organization of the next expedition to the South, and after an hour of pointless quarrelling I had turned to the Mentor, wishing for him to make a final decision. Instead, Achilles had resolved by carrying on staring in the fireplace, not even listening to my words.

"So?" I had growled in the end, "who is going to the damn location to retrieve the damn logs?"

There had been a pause. "I don't know" he had resolved after a while, "I don't think we need logs. We can burn dead leaves instead". His tone was so flat that my anger deflated.

"What about we send Olivier and June?" I had asked with a kinder voice, "they are the youngest. They might need some practice"

I saw him nodding.

"With this scarce visibility, I would rather send more skilled agents. They might get attacked any moment"

"No. Liam is right" the Mentor suddenly blurted, "do whatever he says"

"Shall I send for them?"

"Do as you wish"

"Well, I would like a second opinion" I insisted.

Achilles turned his head and stared at me. He looked like a sick men, his eyes circled in black and all his vigour drained from his face.

"Right"

"Well?"

"Liam" called Hope, her voice slightly upset "let him be".

And so now I was in my room, the weight of Shay's absence suddenly heavy on me. Strange to say, I had never imagined I would miss my friend this much. He was the only one to understand my upset mood, shared it, even.

Just as I had sat down to the desk for my evening work, I heard the door downstairs slam. Had Hope lost her patience, at last? Then words hit my ears. More than words, shouting.

"Shay!" I exclaimed to the empty room. He must have been back. But then, why here? He almost never set foot inside the Homestead. Maybe he had come looking for me here after he had found our room in the other building empty. But then, why such commotion?

I listened for a moment longer, then rushed downstairs to see what was going on.

"You knew! You knew, you bastard!" were the first meaningful words I understood among the blur of sounds.

"What the hell is going on here?" I yelled. Hope was pushing Shay away from the room, towards the door while he delicately but stubbornly resisted her.

I paid no attention to what Shay was saying. My only concern was to get him out of there before he crossed the line and made it impossible for me to bring him back to reason.

"What on earth do you think you are doing?" I yelled to him once I managed to drag him out of the house.

"Liam, it was horrible" he blurted, hardly allowing me to finish my sentence. "Houses came crumbling down, and people run all over the place and the children... oh, the children!"

I took a moment to look at him. His beard was overgrown, his features contorted in anger and hurt. Among all that, however, I spotted a consuming grief.

"It must have been terrible" I said, lowering my voice and speaking in a kinder way, "but what does the Brotherhood have to do with this?"

"What do you mean, 'what it has to do with it?' everything! Don't you see, Liam? It happened in Haiti as well. When they opened that damn thing, when they took that damn artefact away from its place, the earth came crumbling down!" his voice rose steadily till he was shrieking.

"Shut up, Shay!" I urged him, noticing a small group of people not too far from us. I took him by his arm and walked him further away from the house. "You cannot be right" I concluded, "There aren't any Precursor sites with such power, Shay. No one ever mentioned such a thing" I concluded.

"You don't believe me, then? Not even you?" his mood swung again. This time, his eyes filled with tears. "you don't? You think I made this up?" his voice was shaky and unstable. I couldn't stand that. I could not stand him crying. I could not stand anyone crying, as a matter of fact. It made me feel vulnerable, like a reminder that it could happen to me too, that I also am a human.

"You don't have to worry, Shay. We'll have this sorted out, you see. Now go for a walk and chill down"

"No. I don't want to".

Instead, I took him by the elbow and dragged him along with me. He did not react, as if he was some kind of doll. His body went limp, but he did not oppose me, either.

Once we reached the small valley safe from the wind, I stopped and kneeled down.

"Here. I am going to light a fire. Have you eaten yet?"

Having no response, I turned to him. He had sat on a fallen log, his eyes fixed into the void as he turned a stick in his hands.

"I can bring you some food"

"I want no food"

"Then what the hell do you want? What is it, Shay?" I stood up with sudden desperation, my finger burning for the incandescent stone I held tightly in my hand. I could not bear to see him like that.

"What has happened in Lisbon?"

"I have told you" he said simply, but his look was still absent.

"Tell me again"

"I touched the artefact. It disintegrated. Then the earthquake, pieces of bricks and stone falling everywhere. And then the houses came down, all the buildings. One by one. Trapping people beneath them. And do you know what I have done? I ran. I ran for my life. I left them there"

"But what about the artefact?"

"Bloody hell the artefact!" he shouted, standing up in anger, "People have died!"

"All right. Right"

"No. You don't believe me yet, do you?"

"I haven't said that. I just need to know more"

"You must believe me. Please..." he whispered. "I should have died. I should have died there" he added in a whisper.

"What?" I exclaimed "What are you blabbing about?"

"Come here, Liam. Please" he whimpered. The crying voice again. The tears. "Please tell me you believe me"

"I do. I do believe you". I dropped the flint on the ground, moving towards him. "I will help you. After you cool down"

He stretched his arms forward. "Please. Please... we must burn it, burn it, burn it..." I was not listening to him. I closed him in a short brotherly embrace, wishing for his words not to be true.

"Just promise me. Promise me that you will go inside and tell them to burn the damn thing" he said among sobs. Desperate sobs.

I felt my stomach churning inside me. He was crying at last, with his hands childishly covering his eyes, like a harmless and desperate baby. Venting himself would do him good, but I still had to keep my feet on the ground.

"No. I cannot assure you that"
"What?" he said, stepping back.

"We'll have a talk about this. We will decide in the morning. You do not need to be concerned on the matter any longer"

"You are cutting me out of this?" his face showed his exhaustion, and everything that he must have been feeling in the past weeks.

"I am saying... Leave this be, Shay. Leave this in our hands"

"You don't know what you are messing with"

"We do. It is an ancient manuscript, Shay. We cannot simply destroy it. We will talk about it in the morning" I concluded. My feet felt sore and my head had begun to ache. "Stay here. When you feel better just come back to our room. I will be there. If you need someone to talk to".

But I never did. I never quite settled down for the night, for I sensed something was about to happen, and I was right.