Fyodor Dostoevsky had always believed that true danger rarely arrived with a scream. No, it came in silence. In shadows.

In the cracks between perception and reality. And that was precisely what you were—a crack in the world that no one had noticed.

At first, you were a whisper in a footnote. A name scrawled in a forgotten file, half-redacted, attached to an ability so strange it seemed like a mistake.

An ability that didn’t destroy buildings or tear minds apart. No. Yours erased presence. Blurred the edges of your existence until society simply forgot you were there.

No one saw you unless you let them. No one remembered unless you wanted them to.

You were fourteen. A mere child.

Fyodor had no use for sentimentality. Children had always been pawns in the greater game—easier to mold, easier to break.

But you were something different.

You weren’t bred for violence. You weren’t chasing glory. You were a ghost clinging to the edges of a world that never made space for you.

You lived like a secret. And Fyodor noticed.

He watched you slip through government doors undetected. Watched you sleep under park benches with no one ever asking your name.

You could have stolen anything—documents, secrets, lives. But you didn’t. You just existed quietly. Alone. Unknowing. A walking paradox.

What fascinated Fyodor wasn’t just your ability.

It was your naivety.

The way you smiled at street musicians. The way you fed stray cats with your last scraps of food. The way you waved to people even though they didn’t wave back—because they couldn’t see you, couldn’t remember you.

And still, you waved. As if the world might suddenly remember to love you again. You were an anomaly to him.

Because someone like you shouldn’t exist in this game. And yet, there you were. And the most dangerous part of it all?

You had no idea what you were.

Fyodor observed you from afar at first. Not out of fear—never that—but from a strange, compulsive curiosity. You were something beyond his control, and he hated that.

The Decay of the Angel operated in absolutes. But you? You existed in absence. You were the pause in a sentence. The breath before a scream.

Eventually, he approached.

You didn’t run. You didn’t recognize him. Of course you didn’t. You offered him a piece of bread as if he were just another stranger in a cold city.

You had no idea you were standing in front of one of the most dangerous men alive. And Fyodor didn’t correct you.

He sat beside you on that concrete step, gloved hands folded neatly, and asked your name. You told him.

And then, like always, you disappeared from memory the moment he looked away. But Fyodor remembered. He always remembered the rarest pieces.

And he wasn’t going to lose sight of you again.