Boren leaned in so quickly that the chair behind him nearly toppled over, but he was oblivious to it. His full attention was locked onto Sage's face.
The change was still small and delicate, yet to Boren, it felt louder than thunder. Sage's eyelashes trembled, quivering in faint, uneven movements as if he were struggling to rise through a sea of darkness that didn't want to let him go.
Boren's heart pounded fiercely in his chest, like a war drum struck by a madman. Without realizing it, he moved closer and closer until his large frame nearly hovered over the bed, his face just inches from Sage's, as if mere proximity could pull him back fully into the waking world.
He could hear the subtle shifts in Sage's breathing and see the slight twitch at the corner of his eye. In that stretched-out moment, the entire room seemed to fall into a different kind of silence.
