Mia’s POV
The darkness does not release me immediately.
It lingers.
Slowly….unevenly…like something reluctant to let me go.
The stone beneath my feet began to frost over, thin threads glowing faintly blue in the air, their lines curbing into symbols I don’t recognize. The closer they came into forming anything complete, the more they seemed to resist it, bending into new shapes before a meaning could settle, as though whatever they carried was not meant to be understood quickly.
I watched them without blinking, my attention drawn into their movement in a way that it feels less like curiosity and more like quiet compulsion.
It was as though something within me was trying to follow their pattern, even as my mind failed to grasp it.
The air shifted.
Not colder.
Just thinner.
Each br
