Shadow of Zin

Voah’s eyes flicked from Hunter—no, Wraith—to the Purger and back.

She felt compelled to speak, but what to say?

As he approached she responded to the Purger’s bait, “Yes. He is my Incus… or was…for a time. Before our paths were separated.”

She hadn’t seen her Incus since the celebration of her Natalday, before the chaos under Fang. Before those mountains chewed the both of them up and spat them out onto divergent paths…before her choice to flee into self-imposed exile.

The shock of seeing him here, now, in this new transformation, sent a jolt through her heart and a shiver through her spine. If she had considered him a tortured man before, pained by trauma and tragedy of his past, it was more evident now. He bore the unmistakable marks of torment in his eyes, and the scars in his face… His eyes hadn’t lost there intensity, quite the opposite. There was something colder, darker in his gaze. If that was possible for the assassin.

Voah’s mind raced. How had he come to stand be under the Purger’s sway? Her mind raced through possibilities: capture, torture, manipulation. He had been reshaped, twisted into a new tool for the Purger’s grim work. The thought stoked a deep anger within her, pushing back some of the fear and awe she usually felt in the Purger’s presence, and replacing it with loathing. There was a bit of jealousy…Hunter was hers… moreover, he had been her companion, her protector, not just some weapon to be repurposed. He was one of the few who had seen her at her strongest, but also her most vulnerable, like Alexis, Tarmen, and Gonyaul…

Wraith spoke no words, but his presence alone was enough. His silence was deafening, his eyes bearing no warmth of recognition or loyalty. It was not a happy reunion like when he had come to her at the rectory those months ago and gave himself to her teachings. Maybe it was just a reflection of the betrayal she felt in her chest… or was she simply projecting her guilt, guilt that whispered she had failed him? That she had abandoned him when he needed her most.. She had believed him to be lost, no, there was no excuse. She had been selfish. And now here he stood, not as the man she remembered, but what felt like something else entirely. Something broken, corrupted.

Voah forced herself to remain composed, to meet his gaze with her own. She wouldn’t show weakness, not now. Not in front of the Duke, especially not in front of the Purger. But the weight of it all pressed down on her, heavy and unrelenting, as if fate was tightening a noose around her throat.

She took a deep breath and awkwardly greeted Wraith with a slight nod, “Cambena be with you, my friend?” Though she had more than a subtle feeling it wasn’t the Goddess of Sea and Storms he prayed to anymore.

She had been taught from a young age not to tug on the shroud of Zin, lest he turn his attention on you. And here she was standing in his shadow, gaze firmly on her every move.

‘Ereuhin protect me,’ she prayed silently, internally, her heart aching.