The academy simulation hummed with a new kind of silence —not the absence of sound, but the quiet after a storm. The fragments of reality hovered more steadily now, no longer twitching in and out of phase, as if the world had taken a breath and begun to hold it.
Jay Arkwell stood on the steps of the main courtyard, watching flickers of code dance in the sky. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes betrayed something unfamiliar: stillness. Not peace, not yet. But the absence of the chaos he had come to know so intimately.
"You used to look at the sky like you were daring it to fall," Alicia said softly from behind him.
Jay turned slightly. "Maybe I was."
She stepped beside him. "And now?"
He didn't answer at first. The silence between them stretched again, but this time it didn't feel like distance. It felt like shared space. "Now... I think I'm just trying to remember which parts of me are still mine."
