The world did not return all at once.
It came back in fragments.
Sound first.
Distant.
Distorted.
A sharp ringing that cut through everything else.
Then came the smell—burnt rubber, something metallic, something wrong.
And then—
Stillness.
The wreckage lay scattered across the road like something violently torn apart and abandoned.
Glass glittered under the harsh afternoon light, shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. A car stood at an unnatural angle, its front crushed inward, smoke curling faintly from beneath the hood. Another vehicle had spun halfway across the road, its door hanging open, dented and broken.
People were gathering.
Voices rose—panicked, urgent, overlapping.
“Call an ambulance!”
“Is she breathing?”
“Oh my God—”
But at the center of it all, there was a s
