The rain took its time returning.
For a few moments, the field remained suspended in an unnatural silence — as if the world were still deciding whether it was allowed to breathe again.
When the first drops touched the ground, they did not strike with force.
Spaced droplets. Careful.
The still-hot mud answered with thin threads of vapor, delicate lines rising and unraveling in the air, like belated exhalations after a trauma the body had not yet learned how to understand.
Nothing moved.
Brígida remained motionless.
The staff steady, vertical, driven into the ground like an axis forcibly holding that space together.
Amber eyes did not blink.
They did not search for shape.They did not search for attack.
They measured intent.
Ahead of her, the presence also did not move.
There was no hurry.
The soft smile remained far too stable for someone surrounded by vitrified ash, residual fire, and bodies that had not yet decided whether they existed or not.
Between them, the water bubble remained intact.
Suspended.
Too perfect.
Inside it, Brianna was motionless.
The water did not run.
It did not vibrate like a common defense.
It pulsed in a slow rhythm, too irregular to be comfortable — almost organic, as if responding to something that did not come from outside.
A drop of rain touched the surface of the bubble.
And did not slide.
It evaporated.
Brígida adjusted her weight.
She did not advance.
But the staff tilted an imperceptible degree — just enough for the air around it to condense, heavy, compressed, as if the world were waiting for permission to fail once more.
That was when the presence looked away.
For the first time.
Black eyes followed the subtle movement of the water, analyzing not the shape…but the cost of maintaining it.
The silence stretched beyond what was comfortable.
When the voice came, it did not break the air.
It flowed through it.
"You know…" she said, with an almost affectionate softness, like someone commenting on something trivial while watching something far too dangerous to touch, "when rain starts boiling after it falls…"
She tilted her head slightly.
The smile did not change.
"…it's usually because someone is still trying to pretend they have control of the situation."
No accusation.
No direct provocation.
Just observation.
The field seemed to grow a little heavier.
The air around the staff lost its fluidity.It did not move.It hurried the silence.
"Control…" Brígida's voice came low, grave, unhurried."…is the name the living give to the interval before the price."
The silence did not break.
It simply settled.
The figure observed Brígida for another moment, like someone confirming something they already knew.
Then she took a lateral step.
Not toward Brígida.
But toward the bubble.
The liquid surface reacted with a slow, tense ripple — not defense, not attack. Recognition.
"I really thought…" the figure said, her voice soft, almost amused, "that your hatred would have learned to grow tired with time."
The smile remained.
Sweet.
Patient.
"Centuries are long, even for you."
She inclined her head slightly.
"All this…" — a vague, broad gesture, encompassing the blackened field, the vapor, the remains — "because of one or two burned witches?"
The Pixy, still clinging to the hem of the figure's garment, shrank in on herself.
Not out of fear.
But like someone recognizing something ancient spoken too loudly.
"You haven't changed," Brígida said, without raising her voice."You only learned to wait longer between one ruin and the next."
The staff pressed into the ground a little more.
"So tell me…" — the amber eyes lifted, steady, without hatred —"how much time do you need this time?"
The smile tilted a millimeter.
"Enough time…" the figure said calmly, "so the wolf doesn't reach the prey before the right throw."
Her hand slid lightly along her own sleeve, as if rearranging something invisible.
"Some pieces had to change places.Others… learned to wait."
Black eyes returned to Brígida.
"It's not ideal.But the game goes on."
Brígida looked away.
Toward the territory — where the wall was no longer whole, where structures had given way under weight that was never part of the original calculations.
There, where the world was still trying to reorganize after impact.
Brígida measured that for a moment.
Then she spoke.
"I would be careful," she said, without altering her tone.
The staff remained firm.
The weight was in the voice.
"This era has produced things far more frightening."
Her eyes returned to the figure, slowly.Not to the smile.
They looked at what came before it.
"There was a time when names like yours decided fates.They ruled through fear, through absence, through promise."
A short pause.
"Now…" — the amber eyes narrowed a degree —"those names have been demoted."
The air seemed to accept it — not as a challenge,but as an inevitable update.
"Wanderers.Echoes that cross worlds because they no longer have a place to remain."
Brígida inclined her head slightly.
Not in respect.
In ancient recognition.
"Your reputation carries no weight in this era.Even if some still insist on whispering it as if you were the first woman."
Silence.
"The world has moved on.And not everything that walks within it still needs to fear you."
The field reacted first.
Not with explosion.Not with rupture.
The water bubble pulsed out of rhythm for an instant — a minimal dissonance, almost imperceptible — then returned to its previous pattern, tighter.
The rain changed cadence.
The drops began to fall a little farther apart from one another, as if the sky were recalculating the safe distance between impacts.
The vapor thinned.
The vitrified ash on the ground crackled softly, like old metal adjusting temperature.
The figure remained motionless through all of it.
The smile did not break.
It only deepened.
She inclined her head, this time not toward Brígida — but toward the world around her, like someone acknowledging an appropriate response.
"It's curious to hear that…" she said, with an almost indulgent softness.
Black eyes then turned back to Brígida.
"After all, there was a time when you, too, answered to another name."
A short pause.
Long enough for the weight to fall.
"Morrígan did the same," she continued, unhurried. "And survived."
Her gaze slid to the bubble.
There was no threat there.
Only calculation.
"Names have always been useful," she said. "They serve eras that need to believe something begins… or ends."
The smile widened a fraction.
"But they are not what crosses."
She lifted her hand slightly, touching nothing, only marking space.
"Some of us did not lose power when names fell.We simply stopped needing them."
Silence.
"Wanderers…" she repeated, as if tasting the word. "Yes.Because those who no longer belong to a throne… learn to walk between worlds."
Black eyes rose again to Brígida.
"The world has moved on," she agreed, sweetly. "But not everything left behind… became smaller."
The rain continued to fall.
Careful.
As if it had learned that certain presences no longer needed announcement.
The pressure in the air thickened for an instant too short to become rupture — but long enough for the field to remember.
The water bubble pulsed once.
Not as defense.
As memory.
Brígida spoke then.
Without raising her voice.
Without ceremony.
"Lilītu."
The name did not echo.
It fixed itself.
The rain hesitated again, as if it had forgotten which direction to obey.
"The events of Salem no longer find ground."
The staff pressed into the soil.
There was no light.
There was no fire.
Only stability imposed by force.
"There was a time when fear needed you to organize itself.
"That time has passed."
For an almost imperceptible instant, the figure's smile lost depth.
It did not fall.
It sharpened.
She looked away.
Not from Brígida.
But toward the space behind her.
Like someone listening to footsteps that do not need to be announced.
"It seems…" she said, with the same softness as before, adjusting her sleeve, gathering something invisible around herself, "that our conversation ends here."
Black eyes returned to Brígida.
"Waiting was never their virtue."
The stability around them wavered.
Not like collapse.Like adjustment.
The wind began to circulate again, but brought neither cold nor heat — it brought direction.
The rain, which until then had fallen undecided, began to align, drops more spaced, as if the sky had chosen a side.
The mud stopped releasing vapor.
Not because it cooled.Because something older had taken precedence.
The Pixy reacted.
Still clinging to the figure's garment, she tilted her head, a crooked smile surfacing without any humor at all.
"Ah…" she murmured, almost an inconvenient whisper. "So that's it.Looks like the brothers woke up."
There was no panic.
Only recognition.
The figure sighed softly.
Not with weariness.With calculation.
"Always so eager," she said, resting her hand on the Pixy's head with a gentleness devoid of affection."Incapable of waiting for the end of a sentence."
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the Pixy's body began to lose definition.
It did not tear.It did not dissolve.
It fragmented.
Thin shadows peeled away from her form, opening into delicate wings, black enough to reflect what little light remained.
One, then another, then dozens — black butterflies emerging where laughter and contained tension had been.
They did not beat their wings in haste.
They rose.
As if they knew exactly where to go.
Black eyes then slid — not to Brígida, but to the bubble.
To what pulsed within it.
The smile deepened a fraction.
"I'm curious…" she said, almost to herself."…to see what your next move will be."
There was no provocation.
No promise.
Only ancient interest recognizing continuity.
The smile was still there when the silhouette began to give way, the outline unraveling in the same silent pattern, as if the world were merely correcting an excess.
The black butterflies scattered with the wind.
And then… there was nothing left.
The field remained.
Wounded.Wet.Real.
The water bubble still pulsed.
Brígida did not move at once.
The staff remained driven into the ground, holding that space together for one instant longer than necessary.
A single black butterfly lingered.
It circled low, erratic, as if still searching for something to obey.
Brígida's amber eyes followed it.
When the butterfly finally unraveled into the air, Brígida released the pressure on the staff.
The world around them breathed — not because it was allowed to, but because it was no longer being held.
She remained where she was for one last moment.
Then she walked slowly.
Toward the territory.
The silence left behind was not empty.
It was a warning.