Callie’s POV
Despite my efforts, I couldn’t sleep.
It wasn’t because of what I had seen—not even because of what I had understood, or thought I had understood, in the forest. It wasn’t the memory of the twins, nor the unsettling certainty that I could also become something I was only beginning to grasp.
It was something else.
Something more constant. More invasive.
As if the entire world had moved too close to me.
Silence was no longer silence.
From my bed, I could hear the TV in the house next door—a cheap sitcom with forced laughter leaking through the walls as if they had stopped existing. Farther away, a barely contained argument, tense voices I couldn’t fully distinguish, but whose tone was unmistakable.
I could even perceive the faint electric hum of the street cables—a persi
