There followed instructions—an island name faintly scrawled, a lighthouse that did not guide but kept watch. Soren shrugged. “He never came back here,” he said. “But he sent things. Artists are the worst at closing doors.”

Proceed with caution. The domain, if live, is almost certainly not a place for academic discourse.

And then she saw Arman. He was seated at the table, older by the weathering of a life but recognizably him: the line of his jaw, the way his eyes angled toward the light. He had not left the island entirely; he had not vanished into legend. He had been there, painting himself into the slow work of coming back.