LOGINShare
A New Kind of Silence
Last Updated:
2025-04-07 23:50:55She stood by the window again.
Vane didn’t blink. He rarely did. Stillness was his first language.
He’d been there since dawn—before her alarm whispered its gentle chime, before her breath fogged the glass above her coffee. He watched her silhouette drift through the narrow confines of that apartment like a ghost too delicate for the world.
The way she moved was soft. Careful. Like the world might break if she stepped too hard.
He liked that about her. The restraint. The hush. It reminded him of the seconds before a kill.There was something fragile about her, but it wasn’t weakness. It was something else. Something he hadn’t named yet.
He knew her routine.
The sweater. The coffee. The bookstore. The mirror glance. The pause. The long, searching look like she was trying to find herself and always falling just short.Most people didn’t see what he did. They saw quiet. He saw silence with weight. With tension.
Like the moment before a storm breaks. Like a pulse held between two fingers.She was beautiful, yes. But that wasn’t what pulled him in. It was the absence. The ache beneath her calm.
She lived like someone trying not to be noticed. But he noticed her. He always would.He shifted, just enough for the knife under his coat to slide back into place.
He wouldn’t move yet. Wouldn’t touch her. Not today.
Today, she was safe.
But only because he said so.His name had begun to drift again—Vane. The papers were late to it, clumsy and afraid. They didn’t understand.
They thought he killed because he was cruel.
But cruelty was messy.
Vane was precise.He didn’t strike for noise.
He struck for silence.And in her—somehow—he found both.
She wasn’t supposed to be there.
A job, clean.
One body. One breath. A narrow hallway. A target. A life removed like a smudge from glass.But then— she turned the corner.
Late, carrying a paper bag and a book with a broken spine. The light caught her face.And for a moment,
Vane forgot what silence was.She didn’t see him.
Not really. Her gaze skimmed past. Soft, tired. Unafraid.She dropped her keys.
Bent to pick them up.His knife was already drawn.
He could’ve— He should’ve— But he didn’t.He watched her hands tremble.
Not from fear. From the cold.And that was the first time he hesitated.
In years.He followed her.
Not because he was told to. No contract. No reason. But something uncoiled inside him that day.
A new kind of silence. Not the stillness before death— But the stillness of wanting.It unnerved him.
She smiled at a stranger once, outside the bookstore.
The man smiled back.Vane bled him on a street far away, hours later. Not near her. Never near her.
Clean. Distant. Untraceable.It wasn’t rage.
It was removal. A clean excision. Like pruning a vine that had grown too close to something delicate.She never noticed.
He watches her sleep.
Sometimes, from the rooftop opposite her building.
Sometimes, from closer.She leaves the window cracked on warm nights.
She sighs in her sleep.
Soft, like the page of a book turning itself.He’s memorized the way her breath catches in dreams.
Why hasn’t he touched her?
He asks himself this every night.
The knife begs for her.
But something in him—something older, colder—refuses.Because she is not a name on a list.
Not a task. Not a problem to be solved.She is something else.
She is the only thing he doesn’t want to end.
Latest chapter
The Softest Kind of Ruin After the Rain
It happened on an ordinary afternoon. No storm. No chase. No sound of boots or gunfire this time. Just the hush of wind through the trees and the whisper of leaves brushing pavement.Nicole had just closed the shop early. The rain had driven most customers away. She walked the long way home, umbrella tucked under her arm, boots echoing on wet cobblestone. And then—She saw him.He was across the street. Older. Paler. The scar along his jaw deeper now.But his eyes—those eyes—were still the same.Her breath caught. Time didn’t stop. It just bent slightly, curling around the two of them like smoke. She didn’t move. Neither did he.Then— A step.He approached slowly, reverently, as if he didn’t believe she was real.As if she might disappear if he blinked.She didn’t speak. She couldn’t. He stood before her now, drenched from the rain, trembling in a way she had never seen.“You’re here,” she whispered. His voice broke. “I shouldn’t be.”“But you are.”He looked down. Shame pooled in his
The Softest Kind of Ruin Still Watching
The end didn’t come quietly.It came with headlights cutting through the trees. With boots crunching gravel. With the silence between them thick as blood.They had been happy. Or something close to it. A crooked version of happiness, made of stolen mornings and whispered names, of shared breath and locked doors. But nothing built on ruin lasts forever.He felt it before she did—the shift in the air. They were closing in.Keiran had stood in the kitchen, hands trembling for the first time in years. Nicole had found him there, frozen, knife still in hand, the sound of her voice barely reaching him.“They found us, didn’t they?” He didn’t answer. Just looked at her like she was already slipping away.When she tried to follow him out the door, he stopped her. Gripped her shoulders. Hard, like he was trying to memorize the shape of her. “You don’t go with me,” he said.Her voice cracked. “I’m not letting you—”“You have to.”She shook her head, eyes wild with refusal, with grief. “I stayed
The Softest Kind of Ruin Where the Fog Gathers
The house was small.Just three rooms and a crooked porch that moaned with every passing breeze. It sat on the edge of a coastal town where the fog rolled in like memory—soft and heavy, blurring the edges of everything.Nicole stood barefoot on the porch, a chipped mug warming her hands. The tea had long gone cold. She wasn’t waiting for anything. But she watched, always. The ocean stretched out before her like a wound stitched in salt and silence. Behind her, the house creaked—settling, shifting. Breathing.Or maybe it was him.She didn’t flinch when the patio door opened. Keiran moved behind her, quiet as always. But she knew his presence now the way one knows the weight of their own shadow. He didn’t speak. He never did in the mornings. Instead, he stood close. Let their silence touch. Let the wind carry whatever hadn’t been said.They had been there three months. Maybe four. No phones. No internet. No names. At the edge of town, the locals called them the quiet couple. She someti
The Softest Kind of Ruin The Kettle Whistled Softly
The kettle whistled softly.Nicole stood at the stove, one hand curled around the handle of a chipped mug, the other resting absently against her stomach. Steam curled up and fogged the small kitchen window, turning the city outside into a smear of grey. The air smelled like jasmine—and something sharper. Metallic.Behind her, Keiran moved without sound. He always did. But she felt him there. The way the temperature shifted when he entered the room. The quiet tightening in her spine when his gaze lingered too long.She poured the tea. Two cups. She didn’t ask if he wanted one anymore. He always drank it, even if it sat cooling in his hands for hours.There was a rhythm now. A routine stitched together from silence and strange comfort. He slept on the edge of her bed. Sometimes on the floor. Always close. She never asked where he went when he left the apartment. She didn’t ask about the blood she occasionally smelled on his coat, or why the knives in the drawer were always rearranged.
The Softest Kind of Ruin Where The Door Stayed Open
She let him in.And after that, she never truly closed the door.He remembered the first night—how her fingers trembled when they brushed against his coat. How her eyes lingered, searching for something she couldn’t admit wanting. Not yet. But she would. She always did.Every time he left, he told himself not to return. That space would be mercy. That maybe—just maybe—she would forget him, and he could go back to being nothing. But forgetting wasn’t in her nature. And letting go wasn’t in his.He watched her from the shadows. Always had. He stood across the street from the clinic where she met with the psychologist, noting how she hesitated at the door. Sometimes she didn’t go in at all. She was trying.Her shoulders were straighter now. Chin higher. Like she believed she still had control over her own story. But she didn’t. Not really.Kieran had already threaded himself too deeply into her life. Her rituals. Her silence. Her fear. He saw himself in the bruises she no longer covered.
The Softest Kind of Ruin A Quiet Descent
She didn’t remember the collapse—only the cold tile beneath her knees, the smell of blood that wasn’t hers, and William, gasping beneath her hands—pressure applied too hard, too late, like trying to stop time with fingers and breath.Then… silence.The doctors called it shock. Dehydration. Acute stress response. Words that circled the truth without touching it. Words that didn’t come close to what it felt like to break.Yvette found her. Three days later. Curled on the bathroom floor. Her body hollowed out, her voice gone. William had already been rushed into surgery. The apartment reeked of old copper and something worse—something missing.There were bandages on her hands—scrapes from broken glass, maybe. A bruise darkened her ribs. A stitched cut on her shoulder she didn’t remember getting.She never asked how Yvette found her. Never asked who called the ambulance. There were bigger things to understand.She spent two nights in the hospital. The walls didn’t feel sterile. They felt
You may also like
Even After Death
Lilting Champ6.6M viewsI Want You Back
Meminger506.0K viewsA Life Debt Repaid
Cheng Xiaocheng1.1M viewsAccidentally Yours
Shayla HArt1.8M viewsDear CEO, I Want a Divorce
Anney GW6.2K viewsThe Heiress’s Ruthless Revenge
Chelle246 viewsA Girl Can Only Dream
Riareads 53 viewsCold Hands, Warm Lies
You Keika326 views
