The world slowed to a crawl, bleeding its vibrant colours into an agonising, washed-out grey. In that final, desperate heartbeat, Ileana's life did not just flash before her eyes; it unspooled like an old, frayed film reel, forcing her to bear witness to every ghost of her past. She saw the warm, faded smiles of her grandparents sitting on the porch, the quiet strength of her father, her mother's anxious laughter, and her sister's bright, untroubled face. But the imagery did not stop there. It sharpened, twisting into a jagged blade of guilt as it settled on the face of her younger brother, Ryan.
She saw him not as he was now, but as the boy she had spent years systematically dismantling. Every cruel word she had ever spat, every calculated act of ostracisation, and every time she had deliberately pushed him away into the cold dark of her contempt came rushing back to choke her. The crushing weight of her own arrogance suffocated her.
