Nathan heard her before he sensed her.
A laugh — light, feminine, entirely wrong for the place and the dark and the cold. It threaded through the mist like smoke through a keyhole, intimate and close, the kind of sound that had no business existing in a space like this. His steps faltered for just a fraction of a second, not from hesitation but from the sheer instinctive recognition of danger — the same signal his body had been issuing since he entered this place, now amplified into something that rang clearly at the base of his skull.
The other Yokai had gone quiet.
That alone told him everything. The groaning that had persisted since he first stepped into the mist, the distant shrieking, the skittering sounds from things moving through the white — all of it had simply stopped, as though every creature lurking in this place had pulled itself back and gone still. Not from peace. From deference. Something had arrived that frightened them more than he did.
"You look delicious."
