SWOOSH!
Damien's hand moved.
Not abruptly—just smoothly enough that her mind noticed before her body did.
Elysia saw it coming. She should have reacted. Every fiber of her conditioning, every trained reflex, told her to shift, to step back, to deflect. Her senses caught the faint displacement of air as his arm lifted, the subtle shift in pressure that always came a breath before contact.
And yet—
she didn't move.
Because she couldn't.
Her thoughts lagged behind the motion. She registered the blur, the weight of his presence flickering across her perception like a ripple in still water. The distance between them vanished faster than her eyes could process.
'…Faster…..'
Her pupils dilated. The word echoed through her head before she even realized she'd thought it.
'Way faster…'
This wasn't A-rank speed. It wasn't even the heightened flow of an ordinary Awakened. This was something else—sharper, cleaner…..
