Chapter Title: What Comes After Gods
Silence lingered long after they were gone.
Not the empty kind that followed destruction.
Not the fragile quiet of something waiting to break again.
This silence was… different.
It settled.
It remained.
As if the world itself was catching its breath.
Azrael stood in the center of the ruined village, unmoving, his grip on Quinn steady but no longer tense. The fires had begun to die down, their crackling reduced to faint embers glowing beneath ash. Smoke drifted upward in slow, thin spirals, disappearing into a sky that now looked almost normal.
Almost.
“…They really left,” he said.
Quinn’s voice answered after a brief pause.
“Yes.”
Azrael exhaled through his nose.
“Didn’t expect that.”
“They achieved their objective.”
Azrael raised an eye
