Amelia had only meant to wait a few minutes before heading back.
It was only harmless curiosity at first.
'Where was he even going on the morning right before we head out?' She pondered.
But now, her feet would not move. In fact, her whole lower body felt as if it were stuck inside a cast.
However, the cold clung to her clothes, seeping through the fabric until it reached her skin. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other and rubbed her hands together, both to have something to do and for warmth.
The house in front of her looked… ordinary. Too ordinary for what she knew it hid. Faded paint. Dusty windows. The kind of place you would walk past without a second glance.
Yet her stomach twisted as if the bricks themselves remembered what had happened here.
She took a slow step forward, then another, until she was standing in the doorway. She told herself she was just curious. That there was no harm in looking.
Her fingers curled lightly around the doorframe, keeping her body in the shadow.
Raven was there, in the middle of the room. Still. Unmoving. His back to her, shoulders squared like a man ready for a fight.
Then… he dropped to his knees.
He looks powerless, and for someone whom she deemed to be almost invincible, it was more than a faint shock.
Her eyes narrowed. She had never seen him kneel. Not for anyone. Not for anything.
The silence inside pressed down on her. Thin beams of light slipped through the dirty window, catching the slow drift of dust in the air. Every breath he took seemed to disturb it.
Then his head bowed… and the silence broke.
It was not loud. Not the kind of sound that belonged to him.
Just a small, cracked breath, the kind that made you feel you had stumbled into something private. Something you should not see.
Her chest tightened.
'Is he… crying?'
She had seen him drenched in blood, walking away from battles that would have killed anyone else.
She had heard him taunt monsters that even the rest of humanity wasn't ready for.
Crying did not belong anywhere in that picture.
Inside the room, Raven's thoughts pulled him deeper.
'Three years… and I still see it like it happened yesterday.'
His fingers curled against his knees.
'I should have come earlier. I could have done it the day I killed him… but I told myself I needed time. I was just afraid.'
Amelia stayed frozen in the doorway. The longer she watched, the stranger the feeling in her chest became. Hatred did not usually make your throat tighten like this.
Then she heard him speak.
The words were quiet, almost swallowed by the still air, yet they cut through her as if they were meant for her alone.
"I am sorry… Father."
Her breath caught.
Raven's voice trembled again. "I failed you. I failed Mother…"
The last word was muffled. She almost missed it.
"…and him too. My baby brother."
Her eyes widened. The sound of those last two words felt heavier than it should have.
'Brother?' The thought struck her like ice water. 'He… had a brother? A little one?'
Her mind reeled, dragging the threads of memory together. 'My father… he didn't just kill his father. He killed his mother too… and a child.''
The image slammed into her — a toddler's face, small hands, a body far too small to fight or run.
No… no, this cannot be right. Maybe I misheard. Maybe it is not what I think.'
But the quiet in the room left no space for lies. She knew exactly what she had heard.
Her stomach churned. 'That means my father had his entire family murdered in front of him. And he was powerless to stop it.'
She felt her breathing grow shallow. 'I hated him for killing my father… but this… this is different. This is not the same as the story I told myself.'
Guilt slipped in, sharp and cold. 'All this time, I thought I was the only one wronged. I thought my pain was the only one that mattered.'
Her jaw clenched. She wanted to look away, but could not. Seeing him kneeling there, shaking, was like watching stone crumble.
Her mind fought to put the walls back up. 'But it was still my father. Blood is blood.'
The thought felt hollow the moment she formed it.
Raven's voice dropped lower. "I have killed them all… but it still does not feel like enough."
The quiet after those words was worse than the words themselves.
Amelia felt her chest twist painfully. He already lost everything once. 'And I was planning to take more from him.'
Her hatred felt weaker now, not gone but tangled with something heavier, something that made her throat tighten.
'Why do I feel like this? Why do I feel like I have been wrong this whole time?'
Raven's thoughts kept spinning in the dust-filled air. 'I thought this would feel like closing a wound. But it just feels empty. Like I am still standing in that night, waiting for it to happen all over again.'
Amelia stepped back a little, almost tripping on the doorstep. She should not be hearing this. She should not be here at all. But her feet did not want to move away.
'I was so sure he was only a monster. Now I see a man who's been living in hell since that night. And my father…' Her jaw tightened again. 'My father put him there.'
Raven's breathing steadied a little, but the weight in the room did not lift. His head stayed bowed. His hands rested on the floor, for the strength to lift them was gone.
'Mother… I kept going. I kept breathing. I kept fighting. But it was all just to get here.'
A faint smile that had no joy touched his lips. 'And now here is empty too.'
Amelia closed her eyes for a moment. The sound of his voice clung to her ears. The way he said "Mother" and "brother" carried something she could not quite name. It was too much pain for her to ignore, no matter how much she wanted to.
She opened her eyes again and looked at him. Really looked. And for the first time since she had met him, she did not just see the man who killed her father. She saw someone crushed under something so heavy she could not imagine carrying it herself.
Her hand slipped from the doorframe. She took a quiet step back, then another.
She had to leave. She could not let him see her here. Not like this. Not when her chest felt tight, and her thoughts were a mess.
'I do not know what to do with this.' The thought rang clear in her head. 'But I cannot hate him the way I did before.'
That scared her more than the hatred ever had.
So she buried it.
She pulled the feeling down, shoved it somewhere deep, and locked it away before it could spread.
If she let herself think any further, if she let herself feel, then everything she was holding onto would fall apart.
She was not ready for that.
Inside, Raven stayed where he was. The ache in his chest pulsed with each slow breath. He did not hear her leaving.
After a while, he pushed his hands against the floor and started to rise.
For the first time in hours, he glanced toward the doorway. Something pricked at the back of his mind. A faint tension in the air. Like he had been watched.
He stood fully and turned his head slightly, scanning the empty street outside through the dusty glass. Nothing. No one.
His Awareness skill had not triggered. Whoever might have been there had stayed outside its range.
'Probably nothing.' He exhaled slowly and looked back at the room.
Still, the feeling lingered.