The air in the Fork was still—too still. In the aftermath of the storm of fire and shattering, silence clung like a second skin, tight and suffocating. It was not the normal silence of an open field or a quiet room.
This was the kind that had weight, a silence that smothered sound itself, and even the beat of Kaito's heart was too loud.
He stood at the edge of a broken bridge, its broken stone teeth jutting into nothing, the remnant of some forgotten highway that had long ago passed over what was now void.
In the distance, there was no horizon but a swelling black that throbbed with slow, deliberate movement, like the exhale and inhale of some enormous creature.
Nyra was at his side, as she was every waking moment now. Her hand brushed against his arm, holding him to a reality that dissolved thread by thread. She whispered, as though even the tone of her voice might beckon the shadows closer.
"They've stopped moving."
Kaito didn't have to ask whom she meant.
