[Ava's POV]
Consciousness did not return to Ava like a dawn, gentle and gradual. It reclaimed her with the violence of a lightning strike, searing away the comforting blackness of oblivion. She did not open her eyes to the world. The world invaded her—a brutal, sense-shattering genesis.
Her vision was not a field of darkness giving way to light. It was a supernova of pure, featureless white, an annihilating glare that consumed all sense of space and form. In this silent, blinding void, she had no body, no boundary.
She was raw, exposed consciousness, a nerve ending stripped of its protective sheath. And into that defenseless core poured a flood that was not sight, not sound, but pure, undiluted emotion that did not belong to her. It was a triple-barreled assault, each stream distinct,
