Rond and Ena POV (Third Person point of view)

  As Rond finished speaking with the man in charge of the forensics team, he noticed his daughter, Ena, running toward him. Just moments ago, her face had held an expression of contemption as she observed the crime scene. Now, it was filled with panic and fear.

  As Rond was about to ask what was wrong, Ena grabbed onto him tightly. He immediately noticed her strained breathing and trembling fingers. Without hesitation, he pulled her into a hug, holding her close until she regained control of her fear and breathing.

  "D..Dad...Dad.." Ena took, slow, deep breaths, trying to composing herself.

  “What happened? I’ve never seen you this shaken before, Ena. Not even when you saw a dead body.” Rond’s expression grew serious.

  "Dad.....it wasnt the dead body....I saw....I saw a woman..."

  Rond raised his eyes. "A woman? But who-."

  Ena cut him off and her voice came out strained, as if forcing herself to say it. "A woman with amber eyes...and I think she had twin tails."

  Rond paused.....Rond blinked. It sounded famir to him-it sounded too famir. "Wha-"

  Before he could respond, Ena continued, her words spilling out in a frantic rush. “I don’t know if what I saw was real, but I felt it, Dad. Hatred-pure, seething hatred. It wasn’t human. When it looked at Dr. Zoshant’s body, it was... I don’t know, furious? Enraged? Like his death was some kind of insult to it. Actually, scratch that-it loathed seeing him dead. It wasn’t just anger. It was grief twisted into something monstrous, something unnatural. It was furious that he was gone, that someone had dared to take him away. I could feel it, Dad-whoever, whatever it was, it loved him. Deeply. Desperately. And seeing him like that… it was as if it couldn’t bear it! It-” she inhaled sharply, trying to steady herself.

  “It was a spirit, a ghost, or something else entirely! I could only see the silhouette, just bckness, and those burning amber eyes. Nothing else!”

  Ena paused, her breath unsteady, and when she spoke again, her voice trembled. “Dad… it was so angry, so full of hate, so full of rage that I couldn’t breathe… I couldn’t move… And even now, I still feel it.” Her voice was quieter now, shaken. “I know I must sound crazy. Heck, I—I don’t even know if it was a hallucination. Maybe I was just seeing things and I am finally going crazy. But that hatred was real. I—”

  For the first time in a long while, Rond was speechless.

  Ena had always been calm. Collected. She had seen unsettling things before, but never had she reacted like this. But his own daughters description of the woman...Rond grabbed his daughters hand and slowly went back to where Dr. Zoshant yed. Ena knew her father well enough to realize he had an idea. He understood that the woman was gone, but something about Ena’s description meant something to him. He needed to see something.

  As they walked, Ena, now regaining control over herself, spoke again.

  "Before we head in Dad, I found this." Ena then took something out of her pockets. A stone.

  Rond paused and took it. Rond saw something strange. Engraved into the surface was a unique insignia—an infinity symbol, interwoven with the design of a star and a circle. It was unnatural. Too well-made, too deliberate. And Rond had never seen anything like it before.

  "You found this?"

  “In the rubble. Near the spot where they might have dragged Decn.”

  Rond nodded, trusting her instincts. He knew how sharp and observant his daughter was during investigations.

  "We will look into this ter. This could be a major lead." Rond put the stone in his pocket. "For now, lets go inside Ena."

  Ena nodded, but she didnt let go of her dads hand. As Ena and Rond went inside. The sight of Dr. Zoshant still ying there dead still unnevered Rond. Maybe it was because Rond knew the man personally and seeing a dead man whom he owed and was essentially a family friend in their lives.

  “I can never get used to this sight.” Rond muttered, gncing at the corpse before shifting his focus elsewhere.

  Ena held his hand tightly. "I know....he helped Valeria when she was born, didnt he? Wasnt it 7 years ago?"

  Rond nodded. “Yeah… He did.... I owe him a lot. Your sister is perfectly fine now, but when she was born, she was diagnosed with transient neonatal hypoglycemia. It was temporary, but it could have been dangerous if it wasn’t caught early. Most doctors wouldn’t have even noticed it, not unless someone examined her condition extremely thoroughly. But Dr. Zoshant did. He saved her."

  "I remember meeting Decn for the first time around that time."

  Rond nodded. "That’s right. After Valeria was treated, your mother and I personally went to thank him at his home for everything he had done for us. That’s when we learned he had a son about your age." He smiled slightly. "When Dr. Zoshant found out that we had you, a daughter the same age as Decn, both he and we thought it would be good for you two to meet. At the time, you both seemed a bit lonely, and we hoped you could become friends."

  Ena nodded. “Yeah. But you didn’t know Decn and I had already met at school. We were so happy when we saw each other again at his house that day. It was the first time I ever went to his pce. ”

  Rond chuckled at the memory. “Yeah. We were relieved to see you two already had a strong bond. But Dr. Zoshant… he was even more relieved.”

  Ena fell silent for a moment before speaking again. “It was because… Decn’s mom had passed away a month before I ever visited his house, right?”

  Rond paused for a moment, his expression darkened slightly. "Ah...Decn told you, huh."

  Ena nodded. "Yeah, apparently his mom had an mysterious illness that not even doctors or even Dr. Zoshant couldn't identify."

  Rond's expression darkened slightly. "I remember Dr. Zoshant talking about it. He never openly expressed how he felt, but you could tell he bmed himself a lot for not figuring it out. He told me some time ago that he was still secretly researching her illness because he didn’t want the same thing to happen to his son in the future." Rond fell silent for a moment before speaking again. "You never saw her, but I did. I saw his wife a few times when she was alive.

  "You did?"

  "Yeah, I remember seeing her when your mom was admitted to the hospital for a check-up during her pregnancy. Around that time, his wife, Victoria, was lying in a hospital bed in another room. She looked perfectly fine... and she was incredibly beautiful." Rond paused.

  "Since Dr. Zoshant was a doctor there, he could visit her whenever he wanted. And Decn was always with him. They practically lived in that hospital. I remember seeing Decn sleeping in her room a lot. Dr. Zoshant, too. They had a home, but they barely went there. They just stayed by her side."

  Ena went silent. "They were very close werent they."

  Rond nodded. "Extremely so. A very strong bond. Neither of them wanted to leave each other."

  Rond paused once again. "“Which makes this… all the more tragic.” He gestured to the broken house, the destruction, the death.

  Then, Rond’s expression turned serious.

  "But enough of that. I came here because I have a suspicion after what you described."

  Ena looked at him."You know something, dad?"

  Rond nodded and then noticed a photograph on the kitchen counter. As Ena held his hand and followed him, he picked up the picture.

  "Ena, you've never seen Decn's mom, right?"

  Ena nodded. "I never did. It wasn’t a topic I touched on much."

  Rond handed her the picture. "Ena... look at this photo. That’s Decn’s mother."

  Ena took the picture and followed where her father pointed. Her eyes traced over the image, taking in the woman’s striking features-long, bck-blue twin-tailed hair cascading over her shoulders, and a stunning bck dress that accentuated her graceful and well-proportioned figure. The woman was breathtakingly beautiful. Offhandedly, Ena thought that if she ever grew up to have even half of this woman’s figure, she’d be lucky.

  Ena’s eyes lingered for a moment on the woman’s chest, unable to help but take note of how well-endowed she was. She subconsciously hoped she’d develop a figure like that in the future.

  Victoria was smiling warmly, holding both Dr. Zoshant and a young Decn in the picture, a snapshot of a happy family. But then, Ena's gaze nded on the woman’s amber eyes-and she froze.

  The warmth of the photo-the happy, gentle image of Victoria smiling as she held both Dr. Zoshant and a much younger Decn-was overshadowed by the realization creeping over her shoulder.

  Those eyes.

  They were the same. The same piercing, glowing amber. The same twin-tailed silhouette she had seen in the darkness, staring at Dr. Zoshant’s corpse with unimaginable hatred and fury as if the very idea of him dying like this was an unforgivable sin.

  Ena could still feel the weight of that presence, that suffocating malice pressing down on her like an unseen force. Those burning eyes had been filled with something beyond grief, beyond sorrow-it was raw, unrelenting rage. The kind of fury that twisted into something inhuman.

  The more Ena stared at the photograph, the more she felt her hands tremble. It was her. It had to be. The same woman from the photo, the one smiling so warmly with her husband and child, had been the very same entity that had stood in the ruined house, gring at Dr. Zoshant’s lifeless body as if the universe itself had betrayed her.

  “That’s... Decn’s mom?” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

  "Yes," Rond confirmed. "Does she look familiar?"

  Ena's grip on the picture tightened. "That woman... she had the same eyes. The same twin-tailed silhouette. It’s... her. But I thought-I thought I was hallucinating. That I was going crazy."

  Rond remained silent for a moment before finally speaking.

  "I’ve never been one for superstition, but..." He exhaled slowly, his mind piecing together the puzzle. "You described a woman you've never met before-someone I saw years ago. Then there’s this unique stone, this complicated crime scene, and now, the fact that the woman you saw matches this picture exactly..."

  Ena swallowed. “Then… what are you saying, Dad?”

  Rond stared at the picture for a long moment before finally answering.

  “That this is way, way beyond just a typical crime scene.”