The sound did not fade.
It lingered.
It stretched across the broken silence he had forced into this world, and as Cain turned toward it, his breath slowed, not because he was calm, but because something inside him had tightened all at once, like a part of him had recognized something before his mind could catch up.
"…No…"
The word slipped out before he could stop it.
At first, all he saw was a shape.
A figure.
Standing in the distance, just beyond the torn mist that still drifted through the air after his attacks.
Still.
Unmoving.
Facing away from him.
A woman.
That alone would not have been enough to shake him.
But—
It was the details.
