It took hours for the silence to feel safe again.
The agents were gone, but the energy they left behind lingered — like static in the air or smoke after a lightning strike.
Arlen didn't speak for a while. Just stood by the door with his arms folded, breathing like someone who'd just survived something they didn't understand. Which, fair. He had.
I sat at the edge of my bed, hunched over, hands still trembling. Not from fear.
From memory.
The voice of the Echo hadn't just echoed through the hallway.
It had echoed through me.
"Do not touch what belongs to the Ashborn."
That word.
Ashborn.
It burned itself into my bones.
The System didn't explain it. Not fully.
But I knew. Somewhere deep in the places I wasn't supposed to remember — I knew it wasn't just a name.
It was a title.
A bloodline.
A threat.
I left the apartment at dawn. Told Arlen I needed air. Truthfully, I needed distance. From him. From Yara. From myself.
I wandered through the Hollow Market, hood up, eyes scanning. People moved like ghosts, talking too fast and laughing too hard. The desperate kind of joy — the kind people wear like armor.
I stopped at a vendor and bought a stale coffee just to feel normal.
Didn't help.
Because that's when someone sat beside me and said:
"You've already started losing your shape."
I turned slowly.
He was old.
Old like paper and rain and things too tired to rot. Robes dark as tar, eyes clouded over with silver. A Hunter? No badge. No pulse. But I felt his presence like pressure.
"Do I know you?" I asked.
"No," he said. "But your shadow does."
He tapped his cane on the ground once.
And the shadows all around us froze.
Even mine.
[System Notice: Tier Lock Detected]
You are in the presence of a Tier 0 Entity.
Recommendation: Do Not Resist.
"What are you?" I asked, voice tight.
"I'm what waits when the world forgets to die," he said calmly. "And you, Ashborn, are what happens when it tries to remember."