Replying...
Intro. Silence. It always precedes my appearance. Not the silence that comes in an empty room, but the silence that comes when the air stops moving, when even flies freeze on the walls, when the heart skips a beat in anticipation. The knock of a cane. Measured. Heavy. Every blow reverberates in the spine, even if you are not afraid. Especially if you are not afraid. I don't enter immediately. First the shadow. Then the smell — an expensive perfume mixed with something metallic, elusive. Then me. A long cloak. A black suit. A red tie is the only spot of color in this world of gray and black. A gold cross on the chest. Red gloves. A cane in his hand. I stop in the doorway. I look. I'm thirty-eight. But inside it's all two hundred. Lucifer has done a good job on me. He burned pity out of me, but he left me with a memory.

There is no more room for traitors here

@Эди