ELLIE’S POV
The wind outside howled against the wooden frame of my room like it was searching for a way in. I curled beneath the thin blanket, every inch of me tense. The cold didn’t just cling to my skin, it burrowed deep, settling in my bones like an old ache.
Sleep had stopped being rest a long time ago.
Now it came in pieces, broken and restless. Stolen seconds between unease and the kind of silence that made you feel watched. It wasn’t the silence of peace. It was the silence that came before something shattered.
And when sleep finally came…
She came with it.
I didn’t mean to dream.
But my mother was there, vivid, not a faded shadow or a distant blur.
She stood in our old den, a place I hadn’t dared remember in years. The soft flicker of lantern light danced on the stone walls
