Stillness Between the Cracks
The fractured sky above Vija Academy had quieted.
No new distortions. No looming collapse. Only a strange, tentative calm.
Jay sat beneath the twisted remains of the old garden arbor — a space once brimming with student life, now dotted with pale spectral flowers that flickered between real and memory. Their glow was soft, like fireflies trapped in petals.
He leaned back, resting his head against a cold vine wrapped pillar. The system was stabilizing again. Too quietly.
Alicia was not far. She sat cross legged on the edge of the fragmented fountain rim, humming softly to herself. Not a melody Jay recognized — but something old. Perhaps something from before all this began.
They didn't speak. Not at first.
Sometimes silence was safer than words.
A breeze swept through the air — and with it, a faint shimmer of memory-data, like translucent leaves. They drifted between them.
One landed on Jay's hand.
A still image.
