The thing that wore a girl's skin smiled.
"Too cold. Or too hot. Doesn't that get boring?"
Her voice was soft and whimsical, but wrong like a music box echoing from the bottom of a grave.
She twirled slowly. Her dress painted blood over the ash like a child's brushstroke on torn paper. Her feet moved in silence, too perfect, too rehearsed, like a memory playing itself out on a loop.
Airi stiffened. Her breath caught in her throat.
"That voice..."
Crest stepped beside her, face pale, his jaw clenched. He didn't blink. His breath was shallow and uneven. Something in him broke.
"I know that voice..." he said hoarsely.
Bel didn't look at her face. He watched the way her head tilted. The elegant stillness of her spine. The precise, inhuman posture. There was nothing childlike in how she stood.
Instead, it was something his instinct could recognize, even without sensing her energy.
Then Crest whispered the name like it was dragging itself from his throat.
"Elysia."
