Callie’s POV
They didn’t ask me to move forward.
There was no explicit order, no clear signal indicating that I should take a step, but the space in front of me shifted in a way I was beginning to recognize—not as a physical displacement, but as a silent reorganization in which what had once been resistance became passage, as if the territory itself decided when to stop being a boundary and start being a path.
I didn’t step forward out of impulse.
Not out of obedience.
But because I understood—with a clarity I hadn’t had before—that staying where I was wasn’t a real option.
Not within that logic that operated without needing explanation.
And so, without ceremony, without announcement…
I moved.
I wasn’t alone.
Not in the obvious sense.
No one held me.
No one surrounded me aggres
