The morning did not arrive gently. It came with pressure. With expectation. With the quiet, suffocating weight of something inevitable finally taking shape.
Aria felt it before she even opened her eyes. Not through sound — not through alarms or voices — but through the subtle shift in the air around her. The kind of tension that lived in spaces, that pressed against skin, that made even stillness feel loud.
She sat up slowly in the dim light of the room, her gaze drifting toward the window where the city stretched wide and restless beyond the glass. Unforgiving. Always watching.
Her fingers curled slightly against the sheets as her mind moved ahead — faster than the day itself. Elias had made his move. Not loudly. Not recklessly.
But with the kind of precision that meant he wasn’t test
