She stepped off the rooftop.
Just a step.
As if the night air had thickened into glass beneath her bare feet. As if the hundred-floor plunge to the street below was an inconvenience she'd decided to skip. Gravity reached for her, clutched at the hem of that sinful midnight kimono, and found nothing to hold onto.
She simply refused it.
The wind didn't howl around her.
It held its breath.
The world held its breath.
In the span of a heartbeat—no, in the space between heartbeats—her katana sang free of its lacquered sheath. It was not drawn; it simply existed in motion, a crescent moon of steel too swift for eyes to follow, too pure for mortal minds to comprehend.
The blade kissed the night.
And the night yielded.
