Silence.
Not peace—just the gap between heartbeats when the world forgets which side of existence it’s supposed to fall on.
The void had collapsed into stillness. The air shimmered with heat that wasn’t heat, the leftover pulse of the ampersand’s fire. What had been black was now the color of dusted pearl, and what had been stone was gone entirely. The ground below Lena’s fingers felt like smooth parchment—soft, pliant, faintly warm as though it remembered flame.
She tried to breathe. Her chest worked, her lungs fought, and breath came out tasting like rain on paper.
“Dominic…”
Her voice broke halfway through his name.
He lay a few paces away, half-buried under flakes of blue ash. The ampersand between their wrists was still glowing faintly, like a coal that refused to die. She crawl
