Callie’s POV
The air wasn’t still, even though everything appeared calm at first glance. The night stretched with that false serenity that usually fools those who trust only what they see—but I could no longer afford that luxury, because I felt it, I perceived it with a clarity that didn’t depend on my eyes but on something deeper, something that now lived within me and warned me that the shadows weren’t empty, that silence wasn’t absence but restraint, as if the world itself were waiting for the first move to break apart.
I didn’t move forward—not because I doubted, but because there was no need.
They were already there.
Spread with a precision that wasn’t accidental, surrounding without fully closing in, watching without exposing themselves, and as I refined that perception—still str
