POV: Aria
There was no pain here. No breath. No heartbeat. Just light.
But not a comforting light—this wasn’t the glow of sunrise or the warmth of a fire. This light was sterile, suffocating. It pressed in on me from every direction, flattening my thoughts, stripping away sound, time, and sensation. It was too bright to see and too empty to feel. I wasn’t floating. I wasn’t standing. I simply existed.
And even that felt like a mistake.
I tried to move, but there was no body to move. My fingers didn’t respond. My legs weren’t there. I had form—just barely—but I was no more solid than a whisper in a storm.
Was this death?
No, not quite. Death had an ending. This… this was a pause. A frozen frame in the story of my life that refused to shift forward.
I opened my mouth to scream, but no
