"Daddy, save me..."
"Garrison, help me..."
"Daddy..."
"Garrison..."
"Don't be afraid."
A new voice cut through the chaos, silencing the terrified screams and desperate pleas.
Garrison looked up.
A brilliant ray of golden light pierced the horizon, as warm and glorious as the first break of dawn.
A woman stepped out of the radiance.
She was wearing a midnight-blue dress, cradling a five-year-old boy in her arms. The child had his arms wrapped securely around her neck, his small face buried into her shoulder, peacefully asleep.
The woman walked closer, and closer, until she stood right in front of him.
She lifted her gaze.
It was the same pair of eyes. Deep, luminous, and striking as obsidian. But they no longer held the innocent sparkle of a twenty-year-old. Instead, they carried the exhaustion of thirty years, accompanied by an unspeakable, profound sorrow.
She looked at him and murmured softly:
"It's okay now. I'm right here."
Garrison's eyes burned fiercely.
He wanted to reach out and grab her, to hold her tight, to demand where she had been all this time—
But she gently placed Archie into his arms and turned her back to him.
"Where are you going?!" he roared, his voice shattered.
The woman looked back over her shoulder.
The morning light bathed her face, casting a stunningly gentle glow over her features. She offered a faint, fleeting smile, tinged with profound loneliness.
"To Antarctica."
"You still haven't told me your name!" Holding Archie tightly, Garrison chased after her, but the distance between them never closed. "What's your name?!"
The woman paused and turned to face him fully.
In those dark eyes, he saw immense sorrow, unyielding resolve, and an emotion he couldn't quite decipher—a quiet compassion for the entire broken world.

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