The silence after the fight wasn't clean.
It wasn't the kind of silence that comes from peace; it was the kind that still trembled, full of echoes from moments ago. The air clung to the scent of burnt code and the metallic tang of ruptured threads.
Kaito could feel the reverberations of every strike they had landed, every desperate breath they had taken, still thrumming through the space like a phantom heartbeat.
Nyra stood a little apart from him, her back against the jagged remains of a wall. Her expression was unreadable, which somehow hurt more than if she'd been angry or afraid.
The glow from the surrounding riftlight painted her face in fractured colors—amber where it touched her cheek, deep violet in the shadows beneath her eyes.
Kaito wanted to say something. Anything.
But what words could bridge what they had just been through?
