~IRENE~
I woke to nothing, and the nothingness stretched so infinitely in every direction that for a long, suspended moment I could not tell whether I had opened my eyes at all.
There was no ground beneath my feet to anchor me to reality, and there was no sky above my head to offer direction or comfort, only an endless expanse of darkness that felt neither cold nor warm but utterly indifferent. The silence surrounding me was not peaceful in the way forests are peaceful at dawn, but vast and consuming, as though sound itself had never existed here.
For one fragile heartbeat, I believed I was still dying, trapped in that slow and merciless unraveling that follows the final breath. I waited for pain to return, for the memory of steel piercing flesh to bloom again in my back, but instead th
