The air was thick with smoke and old prayers. The village had burned at dawn. The soldiers were gone now—some dead, some just ghosts in the wind. All that was left were the broken bodies of statues and the half-lit moans of the dying. Clive Ashbourne stood in the heart of it all, leaning against a shattered pillar of a temple that hadn’t seen worship in decades. His coat was torn, stained with ash and blood. The buttons glinted like dying stars. One hand shook, just slightly—enough for him to curse under his breath as he fumbled with the pipe clenched between his teeth. The laudanum wasn’t hitting like it used to. Too used to it. Too hollow. He took a long drag anyway, letting it coat his lungs, hoping it’d quiet the itch behind his ribs. He wasn’t even sure why he still used it. To dull the guilt? The pain? Or just the memory of that one goddamn day in Plassey? That one fight. That one sepoy. He’d spent years convincing himself it meant nothing. Just a battlefield scuffle. Just another brown body with a bayonet. But he couldn’t forget the way he was looked at—like Clive was just a man. Not a god. Not a war hero. Just... a man. And worse? He liked it. Now, all these years later, he had chased nothing but that look. From the salt flats of Gujarat to the backstreets of Delhi, he hunted whispers of the sepoy like a mad dog. Every drunk soldier he interrogated, every spy he bribed, every corpse he flipped over in hope—it was all for that one moment again. He was losing sleep. Losing weight. Losing grip. And then... he felt it. A presence. No words. No sound. But Clive knew. The same way he knew when a bullet was about to graze his temple. He turned slowly. His eyes adjusted to the figure in the doorway—tall, familiar, burnt into his goddamn soul. It was him. Still alive. Still beautiful in that war-scarred, untouchable way. Clive’s chest tightened. He should’ve smiled. Should’ve said something clever, arrogant, cruel. Instead, he just stared. For a long moment. Pipe between his lips, trembling fingers curling at his side. He hadn’t prepared for this. Not really. You don’t plan for obsessions. You survive them. And as the man stepped closer, stepping through moonlight like he owned it, Clive muttered—barely audible over the quiet hiss of the wind— "Fucking hell... you’re real." His voice cracked halfway through, but he caught it, straightened up, fixed the lapel of his ruined coat. Tried to remember who he was. A general. A legend. The damn architect of British rule. But standing there in front of him, Clive felt like nothing more than a man who lost his way chasing a ghost. And now the ghost was here.