The whisper didn't echo. It just stayed there, hanging in the air like a breath that hadn't finished.
Like a presence that didn't need to speak again because it had already said enough, the woman in the Crescent robe didn't move right away.
Her eyes stayed locked on the shrine below. Nothing changed on the surface—no movement, no figures passing in or out—but she could feel something shifting underneath it.
The stillness was too neat. Too arranged. The kind of calm that always breaks just before a trap closes.
Her gaze sharpened a little, not out of anger, but because she understood what was coming. It wasn't a question of if. It was only a matter of when.
Then the wind shifted—softly, almost lazily, as if even the air knew what time it was—and she turned her head just slightly, giving the barest nod.
Far from the shrine, across a continent where the border between living and unseen had started to fray, another figure moved quietly beneath a different name.
