Damon’s POV
The antiseptic smell still clung to the air—too clean, too sharp. Beeping monitors hummed beside me like a quiet orchestra that refused to stop playing. For the first time since the crash, my eyes stayed open longer than a minute. My mind wasn’t racing—just clearer. Sharper than yesterday. Or the day before that, if I’d even been awake then.
Pain radiated across my ribs when I shifted, but it was nothing compared to the weight in my chest. Not physical pain—something deeper. Emptier.
The ceiling tiles above me stared back, blank as everything else. Still, I could feel something had changed. Like the fog I’d been floating in had thinned just enough for a thread of memory to snake its way through.
Bella.
Not a whisper this time. Not a dream.
A name. A truth.
The sound echo
