The silence had not been broken.Not truly.
It remained—a dense, suffocating thing—but now it carried something within it. A shift. A presence.
Lindarion did not turn immediately. He did not move.
The grip on his sword remained steady, but he did not draw.
Luneth's breath was slow, controlled. Her fingers curled around her daggers, yet she did not lift them.
Cassian, standing slightly ahead, was the last to react. His body tensed, his weight shifting ever so slightly. He had not yet looked.
He did not want to look.
A breath. A choice. A moment stretched thin.
Lindarion turned first.
And he saw it.
At the far edge of the place, where the street they had come from stretched into shadow, something stood.
Not a person. Not a beast.
A shape.
A figure draped in layers of something like cloth, something like shadow, something like the dust that was not dust beneath their feet.
It did not move.
It did not breathe.
It was only existing.
