The mystery wasn’t finished, not by a long stretch. The next morning Ethan found himself at the town library. Ethan asked about Riverside, and the clerk pointed him toward the archives. Soon he was leafing through brittle newspapers, headlines blurring until one froze him in place: “Landslide Destroys Riverside Homes.”
The photograph beneath showed rubble and broken beams scattered across the slope. Families wrapped in blankets huddled together, faces blurred by the poor print. Ethan’s eyes lingered on them, searching for something familiar. He traced every word, every smudged name, but the article ended with little more than numbers—homes lost, people displaced.