The Assassin Who refused to Kill me

Chapter 3

Soren’s POV

The days after that felt like a dream. Time didn’t work normally. It stretched out in weird ways, going super slow when I wanted it to go faster, and then rushing by when I tried to hold onto something solid. I walked around the house like I wasn’t really there, like I’d become too light to belong in the place I grew up.

Nobody stopped me. Nobody asked where I was going or what I was doing. In fact, I had more freedom than ever.

At first, I thought it was a mistake. Like someone had forgotten to keep an eye on me, like they’d missed something. But that thought didn’t last. It quickly turned into something quieter and much more sure.

They weren’t watching me because they didn’t need to. The decision about me had already been made.

Once I understood that, everything else made sense. Why nobody paid attention to me. How the staff moved past me without stopping. Why there wasn’t any worry about me anymore, like there would be if I was still someone they needed to protect.

I wasn’t. I was just waiting.

The house stopped feeling like my home, so I stopped staying in it. It happened slowly at first. I’d go out in the late afternoon, telling myself I just needed some fresh air, some space, something that wasn’t tied to the walls filled with too many memories. Then I started staying out longer. Nights turned into early mornings, mornings into afternoons, and I wouldn’t go back inside.

Finally, I stopped pretending it was only for a little while.

The city was easier to be in. Virelli City never asked questions. It didn’t care who you were or what you were running from. It took everyone in without judging, swallowing people whole and then just moving on as if they were never there.

I fit in without trying. The crowds made it easier. The constant rush, the noise, the way everything blended together so nothing really stood out. It gave me something to think about that wasn’t the heavy feeling in my chest, something that stopped my mind from going over and over the same thing.

But it never truly left. Nothing did.

I found myself thinking about my mother more than I ever had before. Not the way people talked about her after she was gone, not the distant version of her kept in quiet, careful talks. The real memories came back instead. Little things. The way she’d pause in the middle of a sentence when she was searching for the right word. The way she would smile at things no one else saw, like she noticed something in the world that the rest of us missed. The way her hand felt when she pushed my hair back from my face when I was younger, soft and slow.

Those memories didn’t feel comforting anymore. They felt sharp. Heavy. Every time I thought about her, it came back to the same place. The same truth I couldn’t get past, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it.

She hadn’t left me. She had been taken. And the people who did it were still living their lives like nothing happened.

That thought settled deeper in me every day, shaping something inside me that I couldn’t change back. It wasn’t anger, not in the way I thought it would be. It didn’t burn or make me want to do something. It just made me feel empty.

And under all of it, there was something else. A quiet understanding.

I didn’t try to avoid what was coming. I didn’t try to run from it. If anything, I made it easier. I stopped paying attention to where I was going. I walked alone more than I should have, choosing streets that weren’t too busy, places where someone could walk up to me without anyone noticing. I stayed out late, long after the safer parts of the city had emptied, walking through places where no one would think twice about what happened.

If someone was going to come for me, I wasn’t going to make it hard for them. It felt like the only thing I could still control.

The nights became my favorite part of the day. There was something about the dark that made everything feel quieter, even in a city that never truly slept. The lights blurred together far away, the noise softened just enough to be bearable, and for a few hours, I could just exist without feeling like I was being watched.

Or maybe I was being watched. Maybe I just didn’t care anymore.

One night just faded into the next until they all felt the same. I stopped counting how long it had been since I last went home, stopped thinking about what was happening there while I was gone. It didn’t matter. Nothing there belonged to me anymore.

The night it finally happened didn’t feel different at first. I had made my way up to a rooftop, one of the many across the city that gave a clear view of everything below. I didn’t remember exactly how I got there, only that I needed space, somewhere open enough to breathe without feeling like the walls were closing in.

I leaned against the railing, my hands resting lightly on the cool metal as I looked out over the city. Lights spread out in every direction, spread out unevenly, making shapes that didn’t quite make sense if you looked too closely. Cars moved on the streets below, their headlights cutting through the dark in straight lines, people walking through places that would forget them the moment they passed.

It should have felt far away. It didn’t. It felt closer than anything else had in days.

The air was colder than usual, or maybe I just felt it more. It touched my skin, sharp enough to keep me on the ground, sharp enough to remind me that I was still there, still standing, still breathing.

For a moment, everything felt almost quiet.

Then it changed. I felt it before I saw him. It wasn’t a sound. It wasn’t movement. It was something else, something harder to explain. A change in the air around me, a presence that hadn’t been there before and now couldn’t be ignored.

My body reacted before my mind did, my grip on the railing getting tighter as I became more aware. I didn’t turn around right away. I let the feeling settle, let it tell me what I already knew before I did anything.

Then I turned. Slowly.

And there he was. Standing a few steps away, like he had always been there. He didn’t move when I looked at him. He didn’t step closer or farther away, didn’t give anything away by how he stood. He just stood there, his attention focused on me in a way that felt like it was planned.

I looked at him without thinking. There was nothing unusual about him, nothing that made him stand out in an obvious way. He could have been anyone, someone just passing through the city without making an impression. But standing there, in that moment, there was no doubt what he was.

The stillness gave it away. The focus. The quiet sure feeling in how he held himself, like everything had already been decided and he was just there to finish it.

I didn’t need to ask who he was. I already knew. And for the first time in days, something inside me felt a little easier. The worry that had been building, the weight that had been pressing down on me since that night in the hall, it shifted a little, loosening just enough to let me breathe.

This was it.

I didn’t move. I didn’t step back or forward, didn’t try to make space or get closer. I stayed where I was, my hands still on the railing, my eyes fixed on him as I waited.

I thought I would feel something more. Fear. Regret. Something that would make this moment harder to face. But all I felt was tired. Tired enough to let it end.

He looked at me for a moment, his gaze steady in a way that felt like he was trying to understand something that didn’t make sense. I wondered what he saw. A target that wasn’t reacting the way he expected. Someone who wasn’t running. Someone who wasn’t fighting. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered anymore.

The city spread out behind me, the lights shining faintly as the wind picked up a little, blowing past both of us without changing anything about the moment. I let my shoulders relax, the tightness leaving them slowly as I settled into the quiet.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to. Everything that needed to be said had already been decided long before he arrived. All that was left was the ending.

And I was ready for it.