Aria’s POV
I woke up with the sun stabbing through my eyelids and my head pounding so hard I thought I’d hit it against something in my sleep. I didn’t even know where I was for a moment. My cheek was pressed to cold concrete, my jacket bunched under my face, and when I moved, my bones ached like I’d been fighting in my dreams. My mouth was dry, my throat burning. It felt like there was sand under my tongue.
I sat up slow, my whole body stiff, and the first thing I noticed was the emptiness. The kind that hums around you when the city hasn’t fully woken yet a few cars in the distance, some voices too far to matter. I rubbed my arms for warmth and looked around like maybe something had changed overnight. It hadn’t. Same street, same smell of stale bread and gasoline, same heaviness sittin
