Silence did not end when the system went dark. It only changed shape. Aiden could feel it pressing against his thoughts, not outside him but inside him. Voices that were not voices anymore moved through him like they owned space. He tried to breathe, but the air felt borrowed. Adrian stood somewhere near, but distance no longer meant location. Seraphina was gone, yet everywhere. That contradiction made Aiden grip the edge of his remaining certainty. A voice rose inside the collapse, soft, familiar, and wrong. You are not outside, it said.
Aiden froze, because it sounded like his own memory. The reflection reappeared, but it was fractured, split into overlapping versions of itself. It looked at Aiden like it had never learned how to stop seeing. Something in its expression felt like panic
