[Ava's POV]
The world, in the stark, hollowed-out aftermath of the truth, possessed a cruel, banal persistence. The universe did not grant the mercy of a full stop, only a grim, plodding ellipsis. Dawn arrived not as a reprieve, but as a slow, gray bleed through the heavy polymer sheets now bolted over the Den’s ravaged windows, transforming the once-proud space into a gloomy, utilitarian cave.
The ledger room, with its dossier of ontological damnation, was sealed behind its wall of cold alloy, a tomb for a secret too monstrous to breathe the same air. But its specter had taken up residence in the marrow of Ava’s bones, in the new, unnerving thrum of the bond.
The morning found Lucien performing an act of surreal, stoic theater in the Den’s smaller, more utilitarian kitchenette. It was
