"Welcome back, Seraphina."
The name hung in the damp, stagnant air of the vault, vibrating against the stone walls like a funeral bell. My instincts didn't just fire; they exploded. In one fluid, practiced motion, my pistol was clear of its holster, the cold steel leveled squarely at the old man’s chest.
"Don't call me that," I snapped, my voice a jagged blade in the silence.
The man didn't flinch. He didn't raise his hands, didn't recoil, didn't even blink. He leaned on his silver-headed cane, his posture relaxed, his expression carved from a sad, ancient empathy. He looked at the gun as though it were a toy, something utterly incapable of harming him.
"I never stopped," he said softly.
Damien lay in the shadows behind me, unconscious, his breathing still hitching in the erratic rhyt
