LILA’S POV
Falling didn’t feel like falling.
It felt like being pulled apart and stitched back together at the same time.
The white vanished.
The pressure disappeared.
The voices gone.
And then
impact.
Air rushed into my lungs like I had been drowning.
My body jerked violently as I collapsed onto solid ground, pain slamming into me all at once.
“Lila!”
Nathan’s voice.
Real.
Panicked.
Close.
I gasped, fingers digging into the earth beneath me as I struggled to breathe, to feel, to anchor myself in something that wasn’t that endless white void.
“I’m here,” I choked out.
“I’m”
My voice broke.
Because suddenly
everything hurt.
Not just physically.
Emotionally.
Mentally.
Like I had carried something too big for too long and now my body didn’t know how to hold it anymore.
