The air in the house was dense, thick as if every molecule were made of ash.Vaathan remained seated, the wood of the chair clinging to his skin as if claiming him. He tried to move, but his body refused.The faint scent of iron and sulfur still lingered —an open wound between the real and what should never have been remembered.
Across the table, she sat.No shadow followed her. No sound betrayed her.Only the gentle tilt of her head, her hair falling like a curtain over a face that no longer breathed.
Vaathan stared without blinking, with the need of a man who had forgotten what love and fear meant.The reflection of her skin seemed to whisper a word—mouthless, airless, eternal.
The chair trembled.His muscles tensed.Reality tore him from that funereal stillness, but every attempt to stand sank him deeper into the wood, as if the roots of the floor were slowly devouring him.
Then he heard it—not with his ears, but within his chest—a distant note, like the harmony that once echoed from the tower of bone and crystal.
The air cracked.The sound was the same.The very one he had tried to forget.
And he understood that tone… did not come from the tower.It was her.Her final breath, trapped in the air since the day the number four sealed her fate.
Vaathan inhaled deeply.The scent of iron returned.Sulfur too.The silence grew heavier, as if the world itself had ceased to exist… except her.
And as he slowly freed himself from the chair, he realized it wasn't hell that held him captive…