The morning after felt different in a way Elara could not immediately name. The mansion looked the same as it always did, quiet hallways, controlled movement, soft light filtering through tall windows, but something in her perception had shifted. It was as if the house no longer felt like a place she was simply passing through, but something she was slowly becoming part of without permission.
She sat at the edge of her bed for a long time before standing, her hands resting lightly on her knees as if grounding herself. Dante’s words from the night before kept returning in fragments, not in order, but in feeling. Alignment, inevitability, recognition, each one landing differently now that she had slept on it and still not escaped it.
Elara finally stood and moved toward the mirror, her ref
