\textchapter{The Journey Continues}
\addtocontents{toc}{\vspace{\baselineskip}} % This creates the blank line in the TOC

The Grail was never just a cup.\\
And the Quest was never just a story.

It is what happens to a person who keeps walking —\\
who discovers, somewhere along the way,\\
that the path itself has become the destination,\\
and that the walking has changed them.

These stories are not the same as the ones before.\\
Not because the Grail has moved,
\\but because I have.\\

I have learned to sit longer with the darkness\\
before reaching for the lamp.\\
I have learned that the most human moments\\
are not only the triumphant ones —\\
but also those where greatness and fragility\\
 inhabit the same breath,\\
the same gesture, \\
the same quietly breaking heart.

The stories in this collection \\
are not about teaching lessons.\\
They do not resolve into tidy morals \\
like rivers resolving into the sea.\\
They witness.\\
They stand beside us human creatures —\\
magnificent and moth-eaten,\\
luminous and lost —\\
and they do not look away.

Because that is what the Grail demands of us, finally:\\
not answers, but the courage to keep looking.\\
The courage to keep asking the Question.\\
If the first volume was an invitation to begin,\\
this one is a companion for continuing —\\
for those who have already felt \\
the ache and have chosen,\\
despite everything,\\
to keep walking.

The Journey is not shorter than we hoped.\\
It is longer,\\
and stranger,\\
and more beautiful.

So let us continue...

— William Zeitler
