[ Something is wrong. Something he can't put his finger on: the voice that greets him certainly is Edelgard's, every bit of it what he remembers, and it confirms what he sees. Surely he can trust that if both match - and yet. Edelgard would've had some almost too proper quip ready for him instead of a question, wouldn't she? Much like the ones they'd traded as students and then again later on a battlefield until it'd ended with a promise to carry on what she'd started. One still ever so slightly bitter for they never needed to reach that point if things had only been different.

And yet.

None of that changes the fact that Edelgard is standing here looking back at him, sounds the same - that can only mean one thing. Claude hasn't moved since he spotted her. If there's a small furrow in his own brow in that brief confusion and that when he blinks she seems to blur for a second like looking through a clouded window it's there and gone when she comes back into focus. ]

I'm talking about the fact that you shouldn't be here. [ Because you died, he almost adds before he catches himself. A relief, considering he hasn't the slightest on what the etiquette is when telling someone about their death, and so he avoids it once more. Jesper told him months ago it was a possibility for someone deceased to be here, and even though Claude had believed him now, apparently, he has proof of it. ] Or - that you somehow didn't arrive when everyone else did, whatever that means. But you can't have been here in Cadens or we would've... known that.