Quảng Trị Province, Central Vietnam – March 2025 The old man stepped off the bus with knees that didn’t trust the gravel. A cane pressed into the red dirt. His boots, newer than they looked, sank an inch deep — like the land remembered him and wasn’t ready to let go. He stood there a moment too long, squinting at the low, tiled rooftops, the tamarind trees, and the haze that blurred the hills beyond. “Ông cần giúp không?” a young man asked, smiling gently. James Riley nodded. “Looking for… Nhàn,

Evelyn hadn’t screamed in forty years, but when glass shattered in her kitchen, the old soldier at her feet rose like a shadow with breath. Evelyn Mae Dwyer hadn’t screamed in forty years. Not since Saigon. But on a Tuesday night in late October, the kind when the wind turns cold without warning, the kind that makes old bones ache, she woke to the sound of breaking glass—and the scream clawed its way out of her before she even sat up. The noise had come from the kitchen. Then another crash. Clos