How could a man so full of life be taken by something so cruel, so sudden, so unexplainable?
Even now, years later, the question burned inside me. It wasn't just grief anymore; it had become something more corrosive, something sharper — a need, a hunger for the truth. I could still remember the headline: "Tragic Explosion Claims the Life of Famed Innovator." An accident, they called it. An unfortunate malfunction. A fault in the wires, a spark in the circuitry, a freak moment that stole him from the world.
But I knew better.
Grandfather wasn't the kind of man to make mistakes. He was meticulous, almost obsessively so. Every project he ever touched turned into something miraculous, something the world didn't even know it needed until it existed. Every blueprint, every prototype was a step toward a future he desperately wanted — a future where technology wasn't just for the privileged or the powerful, but for the broken, the disabled, the forgotten.
And I was supposed to stand beside him.
I was supposed to be there the day of the exhibition. The day the world would finally see the technology we had dreamed about late into so many nights. Bionic limbs that moved like real ones, wheelchairs that could climb stairs, devices that could give back what life had stolen.
But I wasn't there.
Instead, I sat on the cold tile floor of our kitchen, clutching a phone slick with sweat, listening to my mother's gasping sobs.
An accident.
An explosion.
He's gone.
And just like that, my future, my purpose — my heart — was reduced to ashes.
How do you breathe when the person who taught you to dream stops existing?
How do you move forward when the ground beneath you has fallen away?
My father was never the same after that day. The lines on his face deepened, his hair grayed faster, his laughter — the big, booming sound that used to fill our home — grew rare and brittle, like thin ice threatening to crack. My mother tried to keep us all together, but even her smiles became tight and trembling, stretched too thin over the sorrow she carried.
And Joe... little Joe, who barely understood death at the time, wandered the halls like a ghost, clutching the stuffed bear Grandad had given him, waiting for a door to open and for the man he adored to walk back through.
I lost more than a grandfather that day.
I lost the blueprint of who I was supposed to become.
I had spent every childhood afternoon shadowing Grandad in his workshop, scribbling notes on old napkins, learning to solder wires before I could even spell half the words he muttered under his breath. I had memorized the glint in his eye whenever he spoke about a future where no one was left behind.
"Technology must heal," he used to say, his voice deep and full of certainty. "Not just advance. Not just entertain. It must heal."
And I believed him.
I wanted to be part of that world. I wanted to carry his torch higher, farther. I wanted to show him — to show myself — that I could be more than just a girl with big dreams. That I could build, invent, create, change.
But grief had other plans.
Grief wrapped its cold fingers around my heart and squeezed until all that was left was a hollow ache and a growing resentment toward the world that let it happen.
Love...
Love became an abstract concept after that.
How could I trust in love when it had been so easily torn away?
How could I give my heart when I had seen, firsthand, how fragile and expendable it was?
So I built walls.
High, unscalable walls.
Around my dreams. Around my heart. Around everything I had once cherished.
I told myself it was better this way. Safer. Smarter.
Because if you don't let yourself love, you don't have anything to lose. Right?
But some wounds don't stay buried. Some questions don't go unanswered forever.
As the years passed, whispers began to surface — little inconsistencies in the reports, strange silences when I asked too many questions, documents that had once been public suddenly disappearing from archives. It was like a shadow moving just at the edge of my vision, something too slippery to catch but too loud to ignore.
Something wasn't right.
And I couldn't pretend otherwise.
Every fiber of my being screamed that the explosion hadn't been an accident.
Someone had wanted my grandfather silenced. Someone had wanted his work buried.
Someone had stolen the life we were meant to live.
I didn't know who. I didn't know why.
But I knew I would find out.
No matter what it cost.
It was my purpose now — not the same bright, hopeful dream Grandad had nurtured in me, but something darker, heavier, fueled not by wonder but by a relentless, gnawing hunger for answers.
I would find the pieces.
I would fit them together, no matter how broken, no matter how bloody.
I would look under every mask, tear down every lie, chase every ghost until the truth stood naked and trembling before me.
It was my only true aim.
My reason for breathing.
But life...
Life has a way of twisting even the purest goals, of reshaping even the strongest wills.
And fate — fate has a cruel sense of humor, hiding behind its own mask, weaving a story you never intended to live.
I thought I was seeking justice.
I thought I was chasing truth.
I never realized I was running straight into the arms of something — someone — far more dangerous than I could imagine.
Someone who wore his own mask.
Someone whose lies were stitched just as carefully as my dreams had once been.
Someone who would tear open every wound I thought I had hidden, every scar I had foolishly believed had healed.
In my quest to unravel the truth about my grandfather's death, I would find myself unraveling too — piece by piece, breath by breath — until there was no turning back.
Until the girl who once dreamed of healing the world no longer recognized her own reflection.
Until love — that foreign, forsaken thing — crept back into my shattered heart when I least expected it.
And this time, it would either save me... or destroy me.
There is no safe path when you chase shadows.
There is no easy mercy when you tear off the world's masks.
Only the truth.
And the truth, as I would soon learn, has a price.
A price I would pay.
Willingly.