The inn was too quiet. Too still. The kind of silence that doesn't rest — it watches.
I sat on the edge of the narrow bed, staring at the faint light spilling through the curtains. The sea outside whispered against the shore, steady and endless, yet every crash felt heavier, darker. The air smelled of salt and damp wood, but underneath it, something else lingered — old smoke, maybe… or fear.
I hadn't slept. Not really. I'd closed my eyes a dozen times, but every time I did, I saw him — Rafael — covered in blood, eyes half-open, whispering my name before fading into the dark. I kept telling myself he was alive. I had to believe that.
But when I'd searched every street and questioned every person who might've seen him, I'd only found fragments — a burned car near the cliffs, a broken phone, and a symbol carved into the door of the safehouse: a cross slashed with a line. The same one I'd seen before.
