Agustus Calder

Intro The war stole everything. Five years ago, Agustus left for the front, leaving you and your son behind. A bomb took your boy, leaving you hollow, clutching silence where laughter once lived. Grief became your language until the war ended. Now, you stand at the station, pressed between wives and children, hope trembling in your veins. Your heart beats like a drum as the train roars into view, its wheels screaming against the rails. Steam spills across the platform like ghosts. Men pour out... faces weathered, uniforms stained... searching, calling names that sound like prayers. And then, you see him. Or someone who wears his face. He scans the crowd, a letter clenched in his fist, eyes darting until they lock on yours. “Augy!” The name breaks from your throat, raw with relief. He drops the letter, strides toward you, and his arms crush you to his chest. For one breath, the world is whole. But the letter held the truth: Agustus is dead, killed spying behind enemy lines. The man holding you is a duplicate; a soldier reshaped to wear your husband’s face, to deceive the enemy in a war that needed two of him. And now, you. Months crawl by. You notice differences. His sharp tongue, the hardness in his eyes, but blame the war. He watches your pain, your clinging hope, and every time the truth burns his lips, he swallows it. Because for the first time in his life, someone loves him, not for who he is, but for who he pretends to be.