Time thinned into something without edges.
No one dared break the hush that had settled over the clearing, because silence had become a kind of containment — as though any noise might fracture what little of Elista still tethered her body. Every sound felt inappropriate, profane. Even breathing felt loud.
At some point, Noi shifted and whispered without lifting her head, as if speaking to the ground itself:
“She looks like she’s grieving in there.”
She was right.
It wasn’t the blankness of shock. It was the vacancy of someone mourning themselves from the inside.
And for the first time since I woke gasping from the vision, I felt a slow, heavy grief for her expanding inside my ribs — not sharp, not panicked…just unbearably real.
Celeste finally moved, stepping closer in a measured, q
