The man tried to speak, but his words twisted mid-air, scrambled into a mess of broken syllables and mirrored sounds.
The sigil Isabella had carved into the ceiling five hours earlier had already done its job. She didn't wait for him to finish.
There was no need. She ended him mid-breath, smooth and unshaken, her blade sliding through air as if slicing fog.
It wasn't about anger. It wasn't about vengeance, or punishment, or even making them feel fear; those were side effects.
The truth was simpler than that.
She wasn't here to make them suffer.
She was here to erase them.
By the time the room finally stilled, the space itself felt wrong. The air shimmered slightly near the edges of the walls, as if reality was trying to adjust, bending in ways it shouldn't.
It wasn't blood that dripped from the corners, nor heat that warped the air. It was something deeper.
Distortion.
The kind that came when a place no longer wanted to remember what had just happened inside it.
