Trigger Warning: Intense and traumatic scene ahead
Opal's POV
The lightning struck like the world itself had been torn in half.
A jagged spear of light split the blackened sky, white and searing, and for a brief heartbeat everything was frozen—her scream, the trees, the very air—stilled by the violence of the storm.
Then came the silence.
Not the quiet of peace.
This silence was wrong.
No crackling of fire. No thunder. No rain. No breath.
It pressed in from all sides, absolute and merciless, like she had been sealed inside a tomb.
Opal opened her eyes.
And the forest was no longer the forest.
It was the same clearing—but not.
The trees bent like they were bowing, twisted into grotesque angles. Bark peeled from their trunks like sunburnt skin. The leaves hung motionless, a green gone sour. The sky above was a smeared gray void.
She couldn't hear herself breathe.
She couldn't hear anything.
