GRACE POV
Darkness wasn’t even the right word for where I was. Darkness was something you saw. This place was something you fell into, something that swallowed sound and thought until even breathing felt like a memory. I didn’t know how long I floated there—seconds, hours, a lifetime—because the only thing left of me was a thin outline of awareness drifting through nothing. No body. No heartbeat. No pain. No Connor.
I should have been afraid, but fear needed a pulse, and mine had stopped.
Then something stirred.
It started as a faint vibration far beneath anything I could name, like someone knocking on the outside of my existence, barely perceptible but entirely real. It curled through the hollow space inside me and filled it, slow at first and then faster, building pressure like a st
