Taste The Prelude...
This is more than a book.
It’s a journey across war and tenderness, across dying and becoming.
Written between hospital nights and desert dawns, “The Threshold” is born of one vow:
To witness everything.
I am Fred—soldier and lover—and Lily is the soul beside me, still burning even as the wind tries to take her breath.
Together, we invite you to step inside.
Not to be entertained—but to remember what matters.
Where the Doves Never Returned
DEDICATION
To Lily,
forever loved and never forgotten—
the breath behind every word,
the silence that shaped this song.
And to all soldiers, firefighters, Policemen and emergency call takers—
I know the weight you carry.
I know the cost behind the uniform,
the burden behind the headset,
the fire that burns even after the sirens fade.
You are admired when you serve,
but too often forgotten when you come home.
This book is for you—
not as an honor, but as recognition.
You walk through darkness so others can sleep.
I see you. I was you.
And I wrote this with you in mind.​
PROLOGUE
There are wounds that leave no scars. Only silence.
And silence… can last for years. I didn’t expect it to break that day.
Not in a stadium, not under a humid sky in Thailand and certainly not because of a woman I had never met.
She wasn’t doing anything special. Just sitting there, a few rows away.
But something about her felt different from the world I knew.
She turned her head—slowly—and her eyes found mine, as if she had been waiting her whole life for that moment. Then came the smile. Not the polite kind. Not the practiced one you give to strangers. But something softer. Warmer. The kind that reaches somewhere deep inside and awakens a part of you you thought had quietly died years ago.
In that single glance, I remembered what it felt like to be seen.
To count for someone. To belong, without needing to prove anything.
She never said a word. She didn’t have to.
​
That is where this story truly begins. This story begins not in bunkers or night skies,
but in the moment I realized duty wasn’t my only compass. I was waiting, too.
There were signals I could track—radio beacons, distress calls, enemy patterns.
But some signals… some only the heart can recognize. And that day, mine finally did.
So now, dear reader, Breathe. Step gently across this threshold.
This is not just a story of war and rescue. It is a story of becoming whole.
And someone—perhaps you—is meant to walk it with me.
PART ONE
— BEFORE THE ASHES
Where the fire was still a whisper,
and the world had not yet burned.
​
CHAPTER 1 — The Stadium
Lamphun, Thailand, end of April 2022
The stadium pulsed with life.
The crowd was roaring—singing, dancing, drunk on joy and beer. Even the plastic cups couldn’t contain their excitement. They leapt in every hand, flinging golden droplets into the air, sparkling like they too were caught in the fever of the match.
I made my way to the seat my friend had saved for me, a row down. I waved to his circle of friends—strangers then, though their faces glowed with the same ecstatic light. Words were useless. The noise was a wall. We smiled, nodded, let the moment speak.
The soccer match began. A goal nearly came, and the stadium exploded in a single wild heartbeat. I turned to share the moment with Erik, a friend, but he was already wrapped in laughter, dancing with the crowd behind him.
Just beside him, a woman caught my eye.
She was around forty, a Lamphun supporter, speaking rapidly with her friend about the missed chance. Her hands moved as she spoke, sketching fragments of emotion in the air. Her friend looked towards me. A child had just lost his supporter’s scarf near the lady. She returned the scarf to the mother before turning in the direction her friend was looking.
Our eyes met, but she looked down immediately.
Then, slowly, she raised her head and looked at me again.
And just for a moment, everything else disappeared.
There was warmth—a soft tension in the space between us.
She smiled.
Not the kind of smile people practice. Not polite. Not flirtatious.
It was natural. Unforced. Alive.
That smile stayed with me.
Even now, it still does.
Something quiet but undeniable passed between us. No plan. No game.
Just the sudden return of a feeling I thought I’d left behind somewhere far in the past...