Darkness wrapped around Scarlet like thick velvet, soft and endless, swallowing every trace of sensation until there was nothing left but quiet.
No sound reached her, no pain, no memory of weight or breath, only the strange peace of being untethered from her body, as if she were drifting somewhere between existence and absence.
Time had no shape there, and for a while she simply floated, suspended at the fragile border between two worlds, neither fully gone nor truly present.
Slowly, faint echoes began to stir at the edges of that darkness, distant at first, like voices heard through water. She hovered between them, weightless, her consciousness flickering as though unsure where it belonged.
Somewhere far away, something pulled at her, subtle but insistent, like a thread tied
