The world had quieted down in an almost uncomfortably quiet way after everything that had happened. It wasn't absolute silence—there were voices in the distance, the sound of footsteps, fragments of conversations—but still, it seemed distant, as if everything were happening behind a thin layer of reality that didn't fully reach him.
Strax was alone.
Not by abandonment.
But by choice.
The crater still existed, marked by the scars of combat, by the black glass that reflected the sky in a distorted way, as if that place had been removed from the world and imperfectly pasted back together. Further away, Cassandra, Daniela, and Rogue were occupied with simple things—too simple for those who had just seen someone die.
