Chapter 41. Awakening the connection
The silence in the room was heavy, thick as pitch. She hung between the three figures, trapping them with invisible chains of despair.
A woman with black hair that had once been arranged in an elegant hairstyle, but now fell haphazardly over her shoulders, sat staring into space. Her brown eyes, usually so lively and warm, were empty and bottomless. There was nothing left in them but a shadow of the old pain, burned out by years of fruitless search.
A man sat opposite her, bent over maps and covered with parchment sheets. His black hair was streaked with gray, his face was lined, but in his brown eyes, tired to the core, there was still a spark — stubborn, not giving up completely. He traced the familiar routes with his finger, which he had already memorized, but his gaze kept returning to the small, worn photograph that stood on the edge of the table.
It shows a smiling boy. Unruly black hair, freckles on her nose, mischievous brown eyes full of life. And the signature, in his own handwriting: "Azrael."
The man clenched his fists, his knuckles turned white. — Azrael... My son... His voice dropped to a whisper, hoarse from years of pent—up emotion. "I'm sorry... Sorry...
To the right of the woman, in a deep armchair, almost disappearing into his arms, sat a girl. Her black hair fell over her face, hiding it. She was as motionless as a doll. Her own brown eyes were closed, but even through the lids, they seemed to have the same dead emptiness as her mother's. She retreated so far inside herself that she almost ceased to exist to snaruha.
Tears rolled down the woman's cheeks slowly, against her will. They left wet trails on the dusty surface of the table. A soft, ragged sigh escaped from the girl's chest, an answering echo of the pain she could no longer contain.
The ringing.
Quiet, barely perceptible, like a crystal bell that trembled somewhere in the very depths of consciousness. Not a sound with the ears. Vibration. In the blood.
The ringing.
Stronger. It echoed in my temples. In the chest. Where there had been only an icy void for years, it suddenly appeared... something.
The man raised his head. His eyes widened. He felt it. A subtle, long-forgotten feeling. The thinnest thread, once strung at the cost of blood and the most powerful magic their kind had ever known. The thread that was supposed to connect them with their son, with their brother. A thread that has been silent for all these long, painful years. A thread that they had almost stopped waiting for.
Connection.
She came alive. Weak, alien, icily cold. But she was. She was sending a single, clear signal. Not a word. Not an image. Feeling.
Indifference. Absolute, all-consuming, icy calm.
And it was perfect. Because the dead don't feel indifferent.
The girl in the chair jerked violently, as if from an electric shock. Her eyes flew open. A light flashed in their empty, dead depths. Weak, wavering, but alive. She inhaled, and it felt like the first breath she'd ever taken.
The woman raised her head. Her tears were no longer flowing from grief, but from an incredible, blinding shock. She stared at her husband.
The man stood up. He was trembling all over. He looked at his wife and daughter, and saw in their eyes the same thing that was raging inside him— a mute, deafening question and a timid, insane hope.
Their eyes met, and without a single word, they turned their heads in the same direction. To the north.
The girl broke the silence. Her voice was hoarse and unfamiliar, but there was steel in it.
"He's alive," she whispered, and the words hung in the air like a vow. "He's in the north.
The man collapsed to his knees, covering his face with his hands. His shoulders were shaking. But these were no longer sobs of despair. It was a relief. Rage. Determination.
The woman stood up. Her movements, which had recently been so sluggish, became collected and precise. She walked over to the map, her fingers resting on the northern territories.
—Okay,— she said, and there was power in her voice again, the same power that had been inherent in her since birth.
They were no longer broken shadows. They were a family again. A family that knew their son and brother were alive. And who will now do everything to find him.
And far to the north, in the stone cage of the Crimson Castle, Azrael, unaware of anything, felt a slight, almost ghostly tremor somewhere in the back of his mind. A fleeting sense of familiarity that was immediately crushed by cold calculation and the will to survive.
He mistook it for a draft.
But the bond, once awakened, could no longer fall asleep. She was active. And she was reaching out to him across thousands of kilometers, carrying with her an unknown hope and an impending storm.