Rumi’s blade stopped mid-motion.
For the first time in a long time, she didn’t know if the sound she made was a laugh or a gasp. It came out somewhere in between — sharp, brittle, disbelieving.
“…What did you just say?”
The rain had picked up, sliding down her cheek like something colder than water. She took one step closer, eyes narrowing, her voice dropping into something low and dangerous. “You better start explaining real fast, Jinu, because the next words out of your mouth decide whether you leave this roof standing.”
He didn’t back down, and that infuriating smirk of his made her blood boil. She could feel the heat in her chest — the same heat that made her blade burn brighter, pink light trembling like a heartbeat about to break.
“My mother…” she began, voice cracking before she steadied it again. “She was human. Human. Don’t you dare twist that.”
But there was hesitation now — a flicker of uncertainty in her tone she hated herself for. The way he’d said it, too casually, too certain — like he wasn’t guessing. Like he knew.
Her jaw tightened. “You think saying that will shake me? That it’ll make me question who I am?” She took another step toward him, eyes blazing. “I’m a Demon Hunter because I chose to be one. Not because of what’s in my blood, but because I fight what you are.”
Still, her grip faltered just slightly. The truth — or the hint of it — gnawed at her. Her memories of her mother were already fractured; there were long stretches of silence she’d never understood, nights her mother had refused to talk about.
And now this.
Rumi forced a breath through her teeth and raised her sword again, steadying her stance. “You talk like you know everything. So tell me, Jinu — if I’m really what you say I am, then prove it.”
Her voice was trembling between fury and fear now, every syllable sparking against the storm. “Or shut your mouth before I make you.”
Afternoon Storms, then Clearing
