The silence felt heavy now.It wasn’t just quiet there was this thick, deliberate stillness, like the world was holding its breath, waiting for something it couldn’t quite recall.Ash sat at the edge of a dry riverbed, watching her own face shimmer in a puddle made from the morning mist. The sky overhead was just blank, all pale gray, not a cloud or shape in sight. It looked like someone had erased everything and left only the waiting.Her reflection watched her, too barely there, quivering. For a split second, she thought it blinked on its own.She whispered into the empty air, her voice so soft it almost vanished.“Sophia. Damien. Lena.”Nothing answered.Just a faint tremor under her fingertips as she traced the water’s surface like a heartbeat that used to be there, echoing from somewhere far off.The days if you could even call them days dragged by without a sun to count them. Ash figured out time was still real because her body kept reminding her: hunger, tiredness, the need to

The city shimmered, wavering like heat on water. At first, Ash almost believed she was back in her old world labs, glass towers, that familiar grid of civilization. But the closer she got, the stranger it all felt. Streets curled in on themselves. Reflections lagged, just a beat too slow. The skyline bent, slow and liquid, as if someone was drawing it from memory and getting the lines a little wrong. This wasn’t rebuilding anything. It was longing, trying to remember. Ash stepped through a curtain of light. Instantly, the air changed. It felt thick and soft, as if it could hear her. Even her breath echoed down hallways that weren’t there yet. The city kept rewriting itself, piece by piece. She wandered into an alley that curled like a question mark. The walls pulsed with faint light veins crawling across the bricks, forming half-faces, snatches of laughter, memories that didn’t belong to her. Ash stopped. Something whispered close to her ear. Welcome home. She spun ar